E7S    172 


r 


REESE  LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


.    ,694~if.     Class  No.   QifO  .    f 


JAMES     : 
BOSWELL 


FAMOUS  SCOTS  SERIES 

The  following  Volumes  are  now  ready: — 

THOMAS  CARLYLE.    By  HECTOR  C.  MACPHERSON. 

ALLAN  RAMSAY.    By  OLIPHANT  SMEATON. 

HUGH  MILLER.     By  W.  KEITH  LEASK. 

JOHN  KNOX.    By  A.  TAYLOR  INNES. 

ROBERT  BURNS.    By  GABRIEL  SETOUN. 

THE  BALLADISTS.    By  JOHN  GEDDIE. 

RICHARD  CAMERON.    By  Professor  HERKLESS. 

SIR  JAMES  Y.  SIMPSON.    By  EVE  BLANTYRE  SIMPSON. 

THOMAS    CHALMERS.        By    Professor    W.    GARDEN 
BLAIKIE. 

JAMES  BOSWELL.    By  W.  KEITH  LEASK. 


JAMES  : 
BOSWELL 

BY 
W:  KEITH 


FAMOUS 
•SCOTS- 

•SERIES- 


PUBLISHED    BY   : 
CHARLES    **i**>J3t 

SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK 


The  designs  and  ornaments  of  this 
volume  are  by  Mr  Joseph  Brown, 
and  the  printing  from  the  press  of 
Messrs  Turnbull  &  Spears,  Edinburgh. 


Co 
GEORGE  BIRKBECK  HILL, 

D.C.L.  ; 

M.A.  Pembroke  (Johnson's)  College,  Oxford ; 

CHIEF  OF  JOHNSON  SCHOLARS  AND  EDITORS ; 

AND  HIMSELF  MOST  "CLUBABLE"  OF  MEN. 


PREFACE 

THE  literature  of  the  Johnsonian  period  has  assumed, 
in  spite  of  the  lexicographer's  own  dislike  of  that 
adjective,  prodigious  dimensions.  After  the  critical 
labours  of  Malone,  Murphy,  Croker,  J.  B.  Nichols, 
Macaulay,  Carlyle,  Rogers,  Fitzgerald,  Dr  Hill  and 
others,  it  may  appear  hazardous  to  venture  upon  such 
a  well-ploughed  field  where  the  pitfalls  are  so  numerous 
and  the  materials  so  scattered.  I  cannot,  however,  re- 
frain from  the  expression  of  the  belief  that  in  this 
biography  of  Boswell  will  be  found  something  that  is 
new  to  professed  students  of  the  period,  and  much  to 
the  class  of  general  readers  that  may  lead  them  to  re- 
consider the  verdict  at  which  they  may  have  arrived 
from  the  brilliant  but  totally  misleading  essay  by  Lord 
Macaulay.  At  least,  the  writer  cherishes  the  hope  that 
it  will  materially  add  to  the  correct  understanding  and 
the  enjoyment  of  Boswell's  great  work,  the  Life  of  Johnson. 

My  best  thanks  are  due  to  J.  Pearson  &  Co.,  5  Pall 
Mall  Place,  London,  for  the  use  of  unpublished  letters 
by  Boswell  and  of  his  boyish  common-place  book.  And 
if  "  our  Boswell "  could  indulge  an  honest  pride  in  avail- 
ing himself  of  a  dedication  to  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  as 
to  a  person  of  the  first  eminence  in  his  department,  so 
may  I  entertain  the  same  feeling  in  inscribing  this  sketch 
to  Dr  Hill  who,  amid  the  pressure  of  other  Johnson 
labours,  has  yet  found  time  to  revise  the  proof  sheets 
of  my  book. 

W.  K.  L. 

ABERDEEN,  December  1896. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

EARLY  DAYS— MEETS  JOHNSON— 1740-63  .  9 

CHAPTER  II 
THE  CONTINENT— CORSICA— 1763-66  35 

CHAPTER  III 
EDINBURGH  BAR— STRATFORD  JUBILEE— 1766-69  .          54 

CHAPTER  IV 
LOVE  AFFAIRS— LITERARY  CLUB— 1766-73          .  76 

CHAPTER  V 
TOUR  TO  THE  HEBRIDES— 1773     .  .  88 

CHAPTER  VI 
EDINBURGH  LIFE— DEATH  OF  JOHNSON — 1773-84  .        113 

CHAPTER  VII 
THE  ENGLISH  BAR— DEATH— 1784-95      .  .  .122 

CHAPTER  VIII 
IN  LITERATURE      ......        143 


JAMES  BOSWELL 

CHAPTER  I 

EARLY  DAYS MEETS  JOHNSON.       1740-1763 

1  Behind  yon  hills,  where  Lugar  flows.' — BURNS. 

*  EVERY  Scotchman/  says  Sir  Walter  Scott,  'has  a 
pedigree.  It  is  a  national  prerogative,  as  inalienable  as 
his  pride  and  his  poverty.  My  birth  was  neither  dis- 
tinguished nor  sordid.7  What,  however,  was  but  a 
foible  with  Scott  was  a  passion  in  James  Boswell,  who 
has  on  numerous  occasions  obtruded  his  genealogical 
tree  in  such  a  manner  as  to  render  necessary  some 
acquaintance  with  his  family  and  lineage.  The  family 
of  Boswell,  or  Bosville,  dates  from  the  Normans  who 
came  with  William  the  Conqueror  to  Hastings.  Enter- 
ing Scotland  in  the  days  of  the  sore  saint,  David  I., 
they  had  spread  over  Berwickshire  and  established 
themselves,  at  least  in  one  branch,  at  Balmuto  in  Fife. 
A  descendant  of  the  family,  Thomas  Boswell,  occupies 
in  the  genealogy  of  the  biographer  the  position  of 
prominence  which  Wat  of  Harden  holds  in  the  line  of 
the  novelist.  He  obtained  a  grant  of  the  lands  in  Ayr- 
shire belonging  to  the  ancient  house  of  Affleck  of  that 
ilk,  when  they  had  passed  by  forfeiture  into  the  hands 
of  the  king.  Pitcairn,  in  his  Collection  of  Criminal 


to  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Trials  is  inclined  to  regard  this  ancestor  as  the  chief 
minstrel  in  the  royal  train  of  James  IV.;  but,  as  he  fell 
at  Flodden,  this  may  be  taken  as  being  at  least  not 
proven,  nor  would  the  position  of  this  first  literary  man 
in  the  family  have  been  quite  pleasing  to  the  pride  of 
race  so  often  shewn  by  his  descendant.  A-  Yorkshire 
branch  of  the  family,  with  the  spelling  of  their  name  as 
Bosville,  was  settled  at  Gunthwait  in  the  West  Riding, 
and  its  head  was  hailed  as  'his  chief  by  Bozzy,  whose 
gregarious  instincts  led  him  to  trace  and  claim  relation- 
ship in  a  way  even  more  than  is  national.  By  marriage 
and  other  ties  the  family  in  Scotland  was  connected 
with  the  most  ancient  and  distinguished  houses  in  the 
land. 

The  great  grandfather  of  the  biographer  was  the  Earl 
of  Kincardine  who  is  mentioned  by  Gilbert  Burnet  in 
his  History  of  His  Own  Time.  He  had  married  a 
Dutch  lady,  of  the  noble  house  of  Sommelsdyck  who 
had  once  held  princely  rank  in  Surinam.  With  that 
branch  also  of  the  name  did  Boswell,  in  later  years, 
establish  a  relationship  at  the  time  of  his  continental 
tour,  when  at  the  Hague  he  found  the  head  holding 
'an  important  charge  in  the  Republick,  and  is  as 
worthy  a  man  as  lives,  and  has  honoured  me  with  his 
correspondence  these  twenty  years/  From  the  Earl 
Boswell  boasted  'the  blood  of  Bruce  in  my  veins/  a 
descent  which  he  seizes  every  opportunity  of  making 
known  to  his  readers,  and  to  which  we  find  him 
alluding  in  a  letter  of  loth  May,  1786,  now  before  us, 
to  Mickle,  the  translator  of  the  Lusiad,  with  a  promise 
to  'tell  you  what  I  know  about  our  common  ancestor, 
Robert  the  Bruce/  When  Johnson,  in  the  autumn  of 
1773,  visited  the  ancestral  seat  of  his  friend,  Boswell, 
'  in  the  glow  of  what,  I  am  sensible,  will  in  a  commercial 
age  be  considered  as  a  genealogical  enthusiasm/  did  not 


JAMES  BOSWELL  11 

forget  to  remind  his  illustrious  Mentor  of  his  relation- 
ship to  the  Royal  Personage,  George  the  Third,  'whose 
pension  had  given  Johnson  comfort  and  independence.' 
It  would  have  required  a  much  greater  antiquarian  than 
Johnson,  who  could  scarcely  tell  the  name  of  his  own 
grandfather,  to  have  traced  the  well-nigh  twenty  genera- 
tions of  connecting  links  between  Bruce  and  the  third 
of  the  Guelph  dynasty  on  the  throne. 

From  Veronica  Sommelsdyck,  the  wife  of  this  royal 
ancestor  (whose  title  is  now  merged  in  the  earldom 
of  Elgin),  was  'introduced  into  our  family  the  saint's 
name/  born  by  BoswelFs  own  eldest  daughter,  and 
other  consequences  of  a  much  graver  nature  were 
destined  to  ensue.  'For  this  marriage/  says  Ramsay 
of  Ochtertyre,  '  their  posterity  paid  dear/  for  to  it  was 
due,  increased  no  doubt  as  it  was  through  the  inter- 
marriages in  close  degrees  between  various  scions  of  the 
house,  the  insanity  which  is  now  recognised  by  all 
students  of  his  writings  in  Bos  well  himself,  and  which 
made  its  appearance  in  the  clearest  way  in  the  case  of 
his  second  daughter.  His  grandfather  James  adopted 
the  profession  of  law  in  which  he  obtained  some  dis- 
tinction, and  left  three  children — Alexander,  the  father 
of  the  subject  of  this  sketch,  John,  who  followed  the 
practice  of  medicine,  and  a  daughter  Veronica,  married 
to  Montgomerie  of  Lainshaw,  whose  daughter  became 
the  wife  of  her  cousin  Bozzy. 

Alexander  Boswell,  Lord  Auchinleck,  married  his 
cousin  Euphemia  Erskine.  In  the  writings  of  the  son 
the  father  makes  a  considerable  figure,  while  his  mother, 
'of  the  family  of  Buchan,  a  woman  of  almost  un- 
exampled piety  and  goodness/  as  he  styles  her,  is  but 
a  dim  name  in  the  background,  as  with  John  Stuart 
Mill  who  has  written  a  copious  autobiography,  and  left  it 
to  the  logical  instincts  of  his  readers  to  infer  that  he  had  a 


12  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

mother.  The  profession  of  law  was  adopted  by  the 
father,  who,  after  a  residence  abroad  at  Leyden  where  he 
graduated,  passed  as  advocate  at  the  Scottish  bar  in  1 729, 
from  which,  after  a  distinguished  career,  he  was  appointed 
to  the  sheriffdom  of  Wigton,  and  ultimately  raised  to 
the  bench  in  1754,  with  the  title  of  Lord  Auchinleck. 
He  possessed,  says  his  son,  *  all  the  dignified  courtesy 
of  an  old  baron/  of  the  school  of  Cosmo  Bradwardine 
as  we  may  say,  and  not  only  was  he  an  excellent 
scholar,  but,  from  the  intimacy  he  had  cultivated  with 
the  Gronovii  and  other  literati  of  Leyden,  he  was  a 
collector  of  classical  manuscripts  and  a  collator  of  the 
texts  and  editions  of  Anacreon.  His  library  was  rich  in 
curious  editions  of  the  classics,  and  was  in  some  respects 
not  excelled  by  any  private  collection  in  Great  Britain, 
and  the  reputation  of  the  Auchinleck  library  was  greatly 
increased  by  the  black-letter  tastes  and  publications  of 
his  grandson.  A  strong  Whig  and  active  Presbyterian, 
he  was  much  esteemed  in  public  and  in  private  life. 
The  son  had  on  his  northern  tour  the  pleasure  to 
note,  both  at  Aberdeen  and  at  Inverness,  the  high  regard 
in  which  the  old  judge  was  held,  and  to  find  his  name 
and  connection  a  very  serviceable  means  of  introduction 
to  the  travellers  in  their  'transit  over  the  Caledonian 
hemisphere.'  Like  the  father  of  Scott,  who  kept  the 
whole  bead-roll  of  cousins  and  relations  and  loved  a 
funeral,  Lord  Auchinleck  bequeathed  to  his  eldest  son 
at  least  one  characteristic,  the  attention  to  relatives  in 
the  remotest  degree  of  kin.  On  the  bench,  like  the 
judges  in  Redgauntkt,  Hume,  Kames,  and  others,  he 
affected  the  racy  Doric;  and  his  'Scots  strength  of 
sarcasm,  which  is  peculiar  to  a  North  Briton/  was  on 
many  an  occasion  lamented  by  his  son  who  felt  it,  and 
acknowledged  by  Johnson  on  at  least  one  famous 
occasion.  In  the  Boswelliana  are  preserved  many  of 


JAMES  BOSWELL  13 

old  Auchinleck's  stories  which  Lord  Monboddo  says  he 
could  tell  well  with  wit  and  gravity — stories  of  the 
circuit  and  bar  type  of  Braxfield  and  Eskgrove,  such  as 
Scott  used  to  tell  to  the  wits  round  the  fire  of  the 
Parliament  House.  In  his  younger  days  he  had  been 
a  beau,  and  his  affectation  of  red  heels  to  his  shoes  and 
of  red  stockings,  when  brought  under  the  notice  of  his 
son  by  a  friend,  so  affected  Bozzy  that  he  could  hardly 
sit  on  his  chair  for  laughing.  A  great  gardener  and 
planter  like  others  of  the  race  of  old  Scottish  judges 
he  had  extended,  in  the  classic  style  of  architecture 
then  in  fashion,  the  family  mansion,  and  had,  as  Johnson 
found,  *  advanced  the  value  of  his  lands  with  great 
tenderness  to  his  tenants.'  Past  the  older  residence 
flowed  the  river  Lugar,  here  of  considerable  depth,  and 
then  bordered  with  rocks  and  shaded  with  wood — the 
old  castle  whose  'sullen  dignity'  was  the  nurse  of 
BoswelFs  devotion  to  the  feudal  principles  and  'the 
grand  scheme  of  subordination,'  of  which  he  lets  us 
hear  so  much  when  he  touches  on  'the  romantick 
groves  of  my  ancestors.' 

James  Bos  well,  the  immortal  biographer  of  Johnson, 
was  born  in  Edinburgh  on  October  29,  1740.  The 
earliest  fact  which  is  known  about  him  is  one  which 
he  himself  would  have  described  as  'a  whimsical  or 
characteristical '  anecdote,  and  which  he  had  told  to 
Johnson: — 'Boswell  in  the  year  1745  was  a  fine  boy, 
wore  a  white  cockade,  and  prayed  for  King  James,  till 
one  of  his  uncles,  General  Cochrane,  gave  him  a  shilling 
on  condition  that  he  would  pray  for  King  George, 
which  he  accordingly  did.  So  you  see  that  Whigs  of  all 
ages  are  made  the  same  way.'  It  may  have  been  these 
early  signs  of  perversity  that  led  his  father  to  be  strict 
in  dealing  with  him,  for  we  cannot  doubt  that  Boswell 
in  the  London  Magazine  for  1781,  is  giving  us  a  picture 


i4  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

of  domestic  life  when  he  writes  as  follows  : — c  I  knew  a 
father  who  was  a  violent  Whig,  and  used  to  upbraid  his 
son  with  being  deficient  in  "noble  sentiments  of  liberty," 
while  at  the  same  time  he  made  this  son  live  under  his 
roof  in  such  bondage,  that  he  was  not  only  afraid  to  stir 
from  home  without  leave,  but  durst  scarcely  open  his 
mouth  in  his  father's  presence.'  For  some  time  he  was 
privately  educated  under  the  tuition  of  the  Rev.  John 
Dun,  who  was  presented  in  1752  to  the  living  of 
Auchinleck  by  the  judge,  and  finally  at  the  High  School 
and  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  There  he  met  with 
two  friends  with  whom,  to  the  close  of  his  life,  he  was 
destined  to  have  varied  and  close  relations.  One  was 
Henry  Dundas,  first  Lord  Melville,  and  by  "  Harry  the 
Ninth  "  Bozzy,  in  his  ceaseless  attempts  to  secure  place 
and  promotion,  constantly  attempted  to  steer,  while 
that  Pharos  of  Scotland,  as  Lord  Cockburn  calls  him, 
was  as  constantly  inclined  to  be  diffident  of  the  abilities, 
or  at  least  the  vagaries,  of  his  suitor. 

The  other  friend  was  William  Johnson  Temple,  son 
of  a  Northumberland  gentleman  of  good  family,  and 
grandfather  of  the  present  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 
Temple  was  a  little  older  than  Boswell,  who  for  upwards 
of  thirty-seven  years  maintained  an  uninterrupted  corre- 
spondence with  him.  As  he  is  the  Atticus  of  Boswell, 
we  insert  here  a  detailed  account  of  him  in  order  to  avoid 
isolated  references  and  allusions  in  the  course  of  the 
narrative.  On  leaving  Edinburgh  he  entered  Trinity 
Hall,  Cambridge;  after  taking  the  usual  degrees,  he 
was  presented  by  Lord  Lisburne  to  the  living  of 
Mamhead  in  Devon,  which  was  followed  by  that  of  St 
Gluvias  in  Cornwall.  Strangely  enough  for  one  who 
was  an  intimate  friend  of  Boswell,  he  was  no  admirer 
of  Johnson  (whose  name,  by  a  curious  coincidence,  was 
a  part  of  his  own),  and  a  strong  Whig  and  water-drinker, 


JAMES  BOSWELL  15 

'  a  bill  which/  says  Bozzy  humorously,  '  was  ever  one 
which  meets  with  a  determined  resistance  and  opposi- 
tion in  my  lower  house.'  As  the  friend  of  Gray  and  of 
Mason,  he  must  have  been  possessed  of  some  share  of 
ability,  yet  over  his  moral  character  the  admirers  and 
critics  of  Boswell  are  divided.  To  some  he  appears 
as  the  true  and  faithful  Atticus  to  the  Cicero  of  his 
friend,  the  Mentor  and  honest  adviser  in  all  times  of 
danger  and  trial.  To  others  he  seems  but  to  have 
possessed,  in  a  minor  degree,  all  the  failings  of  Boswell 
himself,  and  it  would  appear  the  most  natural  inference 
to  believe  that,  had  Temple  been  endowed  with  greater 
force  of  mental  or  moral  character,  the  results  would 
have  been  seen  in  many  ways  upon  the  actions  of  his 
friend.  In  his  wife  he  was  unfortunate,  and,  at  one 
time  at  least,  he  attempted  to  secure  a  colonial  chap- 
laincy in  order  to  effect  a  separation.  He  was  the 
writer  of  an  Essay  on  the  Clergy  ;  their  Studies  and 
Recreations,  1774;  Historical  and  Political  Memoirs, 
1777;  Abuse  of  Unrestrained  Power,  1778;  all  of 
which  have  completely  passed  from  the  memory  of 
man.  But  he  lives  with  a  fair  claim  to  fame,  as  the 
correspondent  of  Boswell,  who  calls  him  *  best  of 
friends'  to  'a  weak  distemper'd  soul  that  swells  in 
sudden  gusts,  and  sinks  again  in  calms.'  A  chance 
memorandum  by  Temple,  on  the  death  of  Gray,  dis- 
playing considerable  felicity  of  phrase  and  insight,  was 
sent  by  Boswell  to  the  London  Magazine  of  March 
1772,  from  which  it  was  copied  by  Mason  in  his  Life 
of  Gray,  and  in  an  adapted  form  it  was  used  by 
Johnson  himself  in  his  sketch  of  the  poet's  work,  in 
his  Lives  of  the  Poets.  The  discovery  of  the  Letters  to 
Temple  is  one  of  the  happiest  accidents  in  literature, 
and  without  them  the  true  life  of  Boswell  could  not 
be  written.  To  neither  Macaulay  nor  Carlyle  were  they 


1 6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

known  for  use  in  their  famous  reviews.  On  the  death 
of  Temple  in  1796,  one  year  after  the  decease  of  his 
friend,  his  papers  passed  into  the  possession  of  his  son- 
in-law,  who  retired  to  France,  where  he  died.  Some 
fifty  years  ago,  a  gentleman  making  purchases  in  a 
shop  at  Boulogne,  observed  that  the  wrapper  was  a 
scrap  of  a  letter,  which  formed  part  of  a  bundle  bought 
shortly  before  from  a  travelling  hawker.  On  investiga- 
tion, the  letters  were  found  to  be  the  correspondence 
of  Bos  well  with  Temple,  and  all  doubts  as  to  their 
genuineness  were  conclusively  set  at  rest  by  their  bear- 
ing the  London  and  Devon  post  marks,  and  the  franks 
of  well  known  names.  But  the  internal  evidence  alone, 
as  we  shall  see,  would  be  sufficient  to  establish  their 
authenticity.  Published  in  1857  by  Bentley,  under 
the  careful  editorship  of  Mr  Francis,  they  constitute, 
along  with  the  no  less  happy  discovery  in  1854,  behind 
an  old  press  in  Sydney,  of  Campbell's  Diary  of  a  Visit 
to  England — though  Professor  Jowett  was  inclined  to 
doubt  the  authenticity  of  the  latter — the  most  valuable 
accession  of  evidence  to  the  Johnsonian  circle  of  in- 
terest, and  they  shed  on  Boswell  and  his  method  a 
light  which  otherwise  would  leave  much  in  darkness, 
or,  at  least,  but  ensure  a  general  acceptance  of  the 
harsher  features  in  the  criticism  by  Macaulay.  From 
the  remark  by  Boswell  to  Temple — *  remember  and  put 
my  letters  into  a  book  neatly ;  see  which  of  us  does  it 
first/  it  has  been  inferred  that  he  meditated,  in  some 
sort  of  altered  appearance,  their  republication.  That 
Temple  entertained  the  same  idea  on  his  part  we  know 
from  his  own  words,  and  from  the  title  under  which 
Boswell  suggested  their  issue — Remarks  on  Various 
Authors,  in  a  Series  of  Letters  to  James  Boswell,  Esq. 
But  that  Boswell  himself  ever  did  intend  the  publica- 
tion of  his  own  must  be  pronounced,  by  all  that  know 


JAMES  BOS 


what  lies  behind  their  printed  form,  a  moral  impossi- 
bility. 

The  first  preserved  letter  is  dated  from  Edinburgh, 
July  29,  1758.  It  reveals  at  once  the  historic  Boswell, 
such  as  he  remained  to  the  close,  the  cheerful  self- 
confidence,  the  gregarious  instincts,  the  pleasing  air  of 
moralizing,  and  the  easy  flow  of  style.  '  Some  days 
ago  I  was  introduced  to  your  friend  Mr  Hume ;  he  is 
a  most  discreet  affable  man  as  ever  I  met  with,  and 
has  really  a  great  deal  of  learning,  a  choice  collection 
of  books  ...  we  talk  a  good  deal  of  genius,  fine 
learning,  improving  our  style,  etc.,  but  I  am  afraid 
solid  learning  is  much  worn  out.  Mr  Hume  is,  I 
think,  a  very  proper  person  for  a  young  man  to 
cultivate  an  acquaintance  with.'  Then  he  digresses 

to  '  my  passion  for  Miss  W t,'  of  whom,  he  assures 

his  friend,  he  is  c  excessively  fond,  so  don't  be  surprised 
if  your  grave,  sedate,  philosophic  friend  who  used  to 
carry  it  so  high,  and  talk  with  such  a  composed  in- 
difference of  the  beauteous  sex,  should  all  at  once 
commence  Don  Quixote  for  his  adorable  Dulcinea.' 
We  catch  sight  of  him,  at  eighteen,  going  on  the 
northern  circuit  with  his  father  and  Lord  Hailes. 
There,  by  the  advice  of  an  Edinburgh  acquaintance, 
Love,  an  old  actor  at  Drury  Lane,  but  then  a  teacher 
of  elocution  in  the  town,  he  began  'an  exact  journal/ 
and  on  that  journey  it  was  that  Hailes  made  Boswell 
aware  of  the  fact  that  was  to  henceforward  colour  the 
entire  tide  of  his  life,  the  existence  of  Dr  Johnson  as 
a  great  writer  in  London,  '  which  grew  up  in  my  fancy 
into  a  kind  of  mysterious  veneration,  by  figuring  to 
myself  a  state  of  solemn  elevated  abstraction,  in  which 
I  supposed  him  to  live  in  the  immense  metropolis  of 
London.'  Such  were  the  links,  the  advice  of  this 
obscure  player  to  keep  a  journal,  and  the  report  given 


1 8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

to  the  youth  by  the  judge  in  their  postchaise.  As  early 
as  December  1758  we  hear  of  his  having  'published 
now  and  then  the  production  of  a  leisure  hour  in  the 
magazines/  and  of  his  life  in  Edinburgh  he  writes, 
"from  nine  to  ten  I  attend  the  law  class;  from  ten 
to  eleven  study  at  home,  and  from  one  to  two  attend 
a  class  on  Roman  Antiquities;  the  afternoon  and 
evening  I  always  spend  in  study.  I  never  walk  ex- 
cept on  Saturdays.'  A  full  allowance,  surely,  all  this 
for  one  who  regrets  his  sad  impotence  in  study,  and 
writes  the  letters  to  Lord  Hailes  which  we  shall  quote 
later. 

Even  at  this  period  he  betrays  the  fatal  defect  which 
remains  with  him  through  life,  the  indulgence  in  '  the 
luxury  of  noble  sentiments/  and  the  easy  and  irritating 
Micawber-like  genteel  roll  with  which  he  turns  off  a 
moral  platitude  or  finely  vague  sentiment,  in  the  belief 
that  good  principles  constitute  good  character.  'As 
our  minds  improve  in  knowledge/  he  writes,  '  may  the 
sacred  flame  still  increase  until  at  last  we  reach  the 
glorious  world  above  when  we  shall  never  be  separated, 
but  enjoy  an  everlasting  society  of  bliss.  ...  I  hope 
by  Divine  assistance,  you  shall  still  preserve  your  amiable 
character  amidst  all  the  deceitful  blandishments  of  vice 
and  folly/  While  still  at  Edinburgh  he  produced  The 
Coquettes,  or  the  Gallant  in  the  Closet,  by  Lady  Houston, 
but  it  was  ruined  on  the  third  night,  and  found  to  be 
merely  a  translation  of  one  of  the  feeblest  plays  of 
Thomas  Corneille.  This  play  was  long  believed  to  be 
by  Boswell,  but  his  part  was  merely  the  providing  the 
translator  with  a  prologue,  nor  was  the  fact  revealed 
till  long  after  by  the  lady  herself. 

In  November  1759  he  entered  the  class  of  moral 
philosophy  under  Adam  Smith  at  Glasgow.  Perhaps 
his  father  had  thought  that  in  the  more  sedate  capital 


JAMES  BOSWELL  19 

of  the  West,  and  in  close  propinquity  to  Auchinleck, 
there  would  be  less  scope  for  the  long  career  of  eccen- 
tricities upon  which  he  was  now  to  enter.  If  such, 
however,  had  been  the  intention,  it  was  destined  to  a 
rude  awakening.  All  his  life  Bozzy  affected  the  com- 
pany of  players,  among  whom  he  professed  to  find  '  an 
animation  and  a  relish  of  existence/  and  at  this  period 
he  tells  us  he  was  flattered  by  being  held  forth  as  a 
patron  of  literature.  In  the  course  of  his  assiduous 
visits  to  the  local  theatre  he  met  with  an  old  stage-struck 
army  officer  from  Ireland,  Francis  Gentleman,  who  had 
sold  his  commission  to  risk  his  chances  on  the  boards. 
By  this  worthy  an  edition  of  Southern's  Oroonoko  was 
dedicated  to  Boswell,  and  in  the  epistle  are  found  some 
of  his  qualities  : — 

'  But  when  with  honest  pleasure  she  can  find 
Sense,  taste,  religion,  and  good  nature  join'd, 
There  gladly  will  she  raise  her  feeble  Voice 
Nor  fear  to  tell  that  Boswell  is  her  Choice.' 

Thus  early  had  the  youthful  patron  of  the  drama 
blossomed  into  notoriety,  and  having  also  commenced 
attendance  at  the  Roman  Catholic  Chapel  he  had  now 
resolved  to  become  a  priest,  though  curiously  enough 
he  began  this  career  by  eloping,  as  we  are  assured  by 
Ramsay  of  Ochtertyre,  with  a  Roman  Catholic  actress. 
His  father  followed  the  pair  to  London,  and  there, 
it  would  seem,  prevailed  on  the  erratic  neophyte  to 
abandon  his  fair  partner,  whose  existence  would  cer- 
tainly have  been  a  fatal  barrier  to  the  proposed  priest- 
hood. At  least,  like  his  friend  Gibbon  of  later  days,  if 
he  sighed  as  a  lover,  he  obeyed  as  a  son,  and  a  com- 
promise by  which  he  was  to  enter  on  the  profession  of 
arms  was  effected.  His  father  called  on  Archibald, 


20  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Duke  of  Argyll,  an  old  campaigner  with  Marlborough. 
'  My  Lord/  said  the  Duke,  '  I  like  your  son ;  this  boy 
must  not  be  shot  at  for  three  shillings  and  sixpence  a 
day.7  This  scene  reads  like  a  pre-arranged  affair  cal- 
culated to  flatter  the  erratic  Bozzy  out  of  his  warlike 
schemes,  for  which  it  is  clear  he  was  never  fitted. 
Indeed,  the  true  aim  was  really,  as  he  confesses  to 
Temple,  a  wish  to  be  *  about  court,  enjoying  the  hap- 
piness of  the  beau  monde  and  the  company  of  men  of 
genius.'  Temple  had  come  forward  with  an  offer  of  a 
thousand  pounds  to  obtain  a  commission  for  him  in  the 
Guards,  and  Boswell  assures  us  repeatedly,  *I  had 
from  earliest  years  a  love  for  the  military  life.'  Yet  we 
can  with  equal  difficulty  figure  '  our  Bozzy '  as  priest  or 
soldier.  Like  Hogg  who  hankered  after  the  post  of 
militia  ensign  with  'nerves  not/  as  Lockhart  says, 
*  heroically  strung/  Boswell  in  his  own  Letter  to  the 
People  of  Scotland  confesses  himself  '  not  blest  with 
high  heroic  blood,  but  rather  I  think  troubled  with  a 
natural  timidity  of  personal  danger,  which  it  costs  me 
some  philosophy  to  overcome.1  Nor  was  his  devotion 
to  charmer  or  chapel  likely  to  weather  the  dissipated  life 
he  led  in  London.  In  later  life  he  may  have  had 
thoughts  of  his  own  feelings  when  he  proposed  to 
publish,  from  the  manuscript  in  his  possession,  the  life 
of  Sir  Robert  Sibbald.  That  antiquary  had  been  pressed 
by  the  Duke  of  Perth  to  come  over  to  the  Papists,  and 
for  some  time  embraced  the  ancient  religion,  until  the 
rigid  fasting  led  him  to  reconsider  the  controversy  and  he 
returned  to  Protestantism.  Bozzy  thought  the  remark 
of  his  friend,  that  as  ladies  love  to  see  themselves  in  a 
glass,  so  a  man  likes  to  see  and  review  himself  in  his 
journal,  '  a  very  pretty  allusion/  and  we  may  be  sure, 
in  spite  of  his  reticence,  that  his  own  case  was  present 
at  the  time  to  his  mind.  His  distressed  father  enlisted 


JAMES  BOSWELL  21 

the  interest  of  Lord  Hailes,  who  requested  Dr  Jortin, 
Prebendary  of  St  Paul's,  to  take  in  hand  the  flighty 
youth,  and  to  persuade  him  to  renounce  the  errors 
of  the  Church  of  Rome  for  those  of  the  Church  of 
England,  for  it  was  plain  that  Boswell  had  broken  loose 
from  his  old  moorings,  and  some  middle  course  might, 
it  was  hoped,  prove  to  be  possible.  '  Your  young 
gentleman/  writes  Jortin  to  Hailes,  '  called  at  my 
house.  I  was  gone  out  for  the  day ;  he  then  left  your 
letter  and  a  note  with  it  for  me,  promising  to  be  with 
me  on  Saturday  morning.  But  from  that  time  to  this  I 
have  heard  nothing  of  him.  He  began,  I  suppose,  to 
suspect  some  design  upon  him,  and  his  new  friends 
may  have  represented  me  to  him  as  a  heretic  and  an 
infidel,  whom  he  ought  to  avoid  as  he  would  the 
plague/  More  likely  the  Catholic  fit  had  passed  away. 
But  what  a  light  does  this  phase,  erratic  even  among  his 
countless  vagaries,  shed  on  his  relation  to  Johnson ! 
Never,  we  may  rest  assured,  did  he  tell  the  sage  of  this 
hidden  passage  in  his  life;  yet  how  often  do  we  find 
him  putting  leading  questions  to  his  friend  and  Mentor 
on  all  points  of  Catholic  doctrine  and  casuistry,  purga- 
tory, and  the  invocation  of  the  saints,  confession,  and 
the  mass !  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  wrench 
left  a  deep  impress  on  the  confused  religious  views  of 
Boswell,  and  this  is  the  clue  which  explains  the  opening 
conversation  with  Johnson  at  the  beginning  of  their 
intimacy.  '  I  acknowledged/  he  writes,  *  that  though 
educated  strictly  in  the  principles  of  religion,  I  had  for 
some  time  been  misled  into  a  certain  degree  of  in- 
fidelity ;  but  I  was  now  come  to  a  better  way  of  think- 
ing, and  was  fully  satisfied  of  the  truth  of  the  Christian 
revelation,  though  I  was  not  clear  as  to  every  point 
considered  to  be  orthodox.'  Never  in  any  way  does  he 
refer  to  this  episode  of  his  life,  but  the  Life  of  Johnson 


22  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

is,  as  we  shall  have  occasion  to  show,  the  life  in  many 
ways  also  of  its  author,  who  says  of  himself  that,  '  from 
a  certain  peculiarly  frank,  open,  and  ostentatious  dis- 
position which  he  avows,  his  history,  like  that  of  the 
old  Seigneur  Michael  de  Montaigne,  is  to  be  traced  in 
his  writings.' 

Left  to  himself  and  the  guidance  of  the  writer  Derrick, 
1  my  first  tutor  in  the  ways  of  London,  who  shewed  me 
the  town  in  all  its  variety  of  departments,  both  literary 
and  sportive/  he  was  now  busily  spelling  through  the 
pages  of  the  Gull's  Hornbook.  From  this  course 
of  idle  dissipation  he  was  saved  by  the  interposition 
of  an  Ayrshire  neighbour  of  the  family,  the  Earl  of 
Eglintoun,  though  were  we  to  credit  the  account  of 
the  waif  himself  the  Earl  '  insisted  that  young  Boswell 
should  have  an  apartment  in  his  house.'  Certain  it  is 
that  by  his  lordship  he  was  taken  to  Newmarket  and 
introduced  to  the  members  of  the  Jockey  Club.  He 
would  appear  to  have  fancied  himself  a  regularly  elected 
member,  for  here  his  eccentricity  broke  forth  into  a  yet 
more  violent  form.  Calling  for  pen  and  paper,  while 
the  sporting  fraternity  gathered  round,  he  produced  the 
Cub  at  Newmarket,  which  he  printed  and  dedicated 
to  the  Duke  of  York  in  a  characteristically  Boswellian 
strain.  In  doggerel  which  defies  rhyme  or  reason  he 
tells  how  his  patron 

'  By  chance  a  curious  cub  has  got 
On  Scotia's  mountains  newly  caught ; ' 

and  then — the  first  of  his  many  portraits  drawn  by 
himself,  and  prophetic  of  the  lover  of  hospitable  boards 
and  good  cheer  as  we  know  him  in  his  works — he 
describes  the  writer  as 

*  Not  of  the  iron  race 
Which  sometimes  Caledonia  grace  ; 


JAMES  BOSWELL  23 

Though  he  to  combat  should  advance, 
Plumpness  shone  in  his  countenance ; 
And  belly  prominent  declared 
That  he  for  beef  and  pudding  cared  ; 
He  had  a  large  and  ponderous  head, 
That  seemed  to  be  composed  of  lead  ; 
From  which  hung  down  such  stiff,  lank  hair, 
As  might  the  crows  in  autumn  scare.' 

At  this  time  it  is  likely  took  place  the  escapade  with 
which  he  must  have  convulsed  the  gravity  of  the 
Edinburgh  literati  invited  to  meet  Johnson  on  their 
return  from  the  Hebrides.  '  I  told,  when  Dr  Hugh 
Blair  was  sitting  with  me  in  the  pit  of  Drury  Lane, 
in  a  wild  freak  of  youthful  extravagance  I  entertained 
the  audience  prodigiously  by  imitating  the  lowing  of 
a  cow.  I  was  so  successful  in  this  boyish  frolic  that 
the  universal  cry  of  the  galleries  was  " encore  the  cow" 
In  the  pride  of  my  heart  I  attempted  imitations  of 
other  animals,  but  with  very  inferior  effect.'  Blair's 
advice  was,  says  Scott,  '  Stick  to  the  coo,  man/  in 
his  peculiar  burr,  but  we  can  imagine  how  this  un- 
foreseen reminiscence  must  have  confused  the  divine. 
After  an  ineffectual  effort  to  enter  himself  at  the 
Inner  Temple,  the  'cub'  had  to  return  in  April  1761 
to  Edinburgh. 

Old  Edinburgh  was  nothing  if  not  convivial.  Writing 
to  Temple  and  confessing  that  his  London  life  had 
*  not  been  entirely  as  it  ought  to  be,'  he  appeals  to  him 
for  pity  in  his  present  surroundings.  Imagine  'a  young 
fellow,'  he  cries,  'whose  happiness  was  always  centred 
in  London,  hauled  away  to  the  town  of  Edinburgh, 
obliged  to  conform  to  every  Scottish  custom,  or  be 
laughed  at — "  Will  ye  hae  some  jeel  ?  Oh  fie,  oh  fie  ! " 
— his  flighty  imagination  quite  cramped,  and  be  obliged 
to  study  Corpus  Juris  Civilis  and  live  in  his  father's 


24  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

strict  family ;  is  there  any  wonder,  sir,  that  the  unlucky 
dog  should  be  somewhat  fretful  ?  Yoke  a  Newmarket 
courser  to  a  dung  cart,  and  I  '11  lay  my  life  on't  he'll 
either  caper  or  kick  most  confoundedly,  or  be  as  stupid 
and  restive  as  an  old  battered  post-horse.'  Among  the 
many  clubs  of  the  time  Boswell  instituted  a  jovial  society 
called  the  Soaping  Club  which  met  weekly  in  a  tavern. 
The  motto  of  the  members  was  'Every  man  soap  his 
own  beard,'  a  rather  recondite  witticism  which  their 
founder  declares  equivalent  to  the  reigning  phrase  of 
'  Every  man  in  his  humour.'  It  may  be  suggested 
here  that  in  this  company  of  feeble  Bacchanalians 
Boswell  had  copied  the  Rabelaisian  fay  ce  que  vous 
voudras  of  the  Franciscans  of  Medmenham  Abbey 
with  Sandwich,  Wilkes,  and  others.  At  any  rate,  as 
their  self-constituted  laureate,  he  produced  the  following 
extraordinary  song,  which  can  be  paralleled  for  inanity 
only  by  the  stave  he  sang  before  Pitt  in  the  Guildhall 
of  London,  as  a  means  of  attracting  the  notice  of  the 
Premier  with  a  view  to  Parliament.  The  song  is 
characteristically  Boswellian. 

'  Boswell  of  Soapers  the  King 

On  Tuesdays  at  Tom's  does  appear, 
And  when  he  does  talk  or  does  sing, 

To  him  ne'er  a  one  can  come  near. 
For  he  talks  with  such  ease  and  such  grace, 

That  all  charm'd  to  attention  we  sit, 
And  he  sings  with  so  comic  a  face 

That  our  sides  are  just  ready  to  split. 

Boswell  is  modest  enough, 

Himself  not  quite  Phcebus  he  thinks, 
He  never  does  flourish  with  snuft, 

And  hock  is  the  liquor  he  drinks. 


JAMES  BOSWELL  25 

And  he  owns  that  Ned  Colquet  the  priest 
May  to  something  of  honour  pretend, 

And  he  swears  that  he  is  not  in  jest, 
When  he  calls  this  same  Colquet  his  friend. 

Boswell  is  pleasant  and  gay, 

For  frolic  by  nature  designed  ; 
He  heedlessly  rattles  away 

When  the  company  is  to  his  mind. 
"  This  maxim,"  he  says,  "  you  may  see, 

We  never  can  have  corn  without  chaff ;  " 
So  not  a  bent  sixpence  cares  he, 

Whether  with  him  or  at  him  you  laugh. 

Boswell  does  women  adore, 

And  never  once  means  to  deceive, 
He's  in  love  with  at  least  half  a  score  ; 

If  they're  serious  he  smiles  in  his  sleeve. 
He  has  all  the  bright  fancy  of  youth, 

With  the  judgment  of  forty  and  five  ; 
In  short,  to  declare  the  plain  truth, 

There  is  no  better  fellow  alive.' 

This,  it  must  be  confessed,  is  sad  stuff  even  for  a 
laureate  of  twenty,  and  is  jesting  with  difficulty.  Every 
man,  says  Johnson,  has  at  one  time  or  other  of  his  life 
an  ambition  to  set  up  for  a  wag,  but  that  a  man  who 
had  completed  the  Life  of  Johnson  should  in  after  years 
complacently  refer  to  this  character  of  himself  and 
'  traits  in  it  which  time  has  not  yet  altered,  that  egotism 
and  self-applause  which  he  is  still  displaying,  yet  it 
would  seem  with  a  conscious  smile,'  is  scarcely  credible 
were  it  not  out-distanced  by  graver  weaknesses. 

For  about  this  date  he  published  An  Elegy  upon  the 
Death  of  an  Amiable  Young  Lady,  flanked  by  three 
puffing  epistles  from  himself  and  his  friends,  Erskine 
and  Dempster.  In  the  same  year  appeared  his  Ode  to 
Tragedy — by  a  Gentleman  of  Scotland,  with  a  dedica- 


26  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

tion  to — James  Boswell,  Esq  ! — '  for  your  particular 
kindness  to  me,  and  chiefly  for  the  profound  respect 
with  which  you  have  always  treated  me.'  We  hear  of 
his  'old  hock'  humour,  a  favourite  phrase  with  him 
for  his  Bacchanalian  tastes,  and  we  find  the  author 
limning  himself  as  possessing 

1 A  soul  by  nature  formed  to  feel 
Grief  sharper  than  the  tyrant's  steel, 
And  bosom  big  with  swelling  thought 
From  ancient  lore's  remembrance  brought.' 

In  1760  had  appeared  a  Collection  of  Original  Poems, 
published  by  Donaldson  in  Edinburgh  on  the  model 
of  Dodsley's  Miscellanies.  It  comprised  poems  by 
Blacklock,  Beattie,  and  others,  and  a  second  volume 
was  issued  by  Erskine  as  editor  in  1762.  To  it 
Boswell  contributed  nearly  thirty  pieces  along  with 
Home,  the  author  of  Douglas,  Macpherson  of  Ossian 
fame  or  notoriety,  John  Maclaurin  and  others.  The 
merits  of  the  volume  are  beneath  notice,  and  BoswelPs 
contributions  of  Odes,  Epigrams,  Letters,  Epistles,  are 
of  the  traditional  character;  but  An  Epistle  from  a 
London  Buck  to  his  Friend  must  have  been  read  by 
his  father  with  regret,  and  by  his  mother  of  *  almost 
unexampled  piety  and  goodness'  with  shame.  There 
is  only  one  poem  that  calls  for  attention,  the  Evening 
Walk  in  the  Abbey  Church  of  Holyrood  House,  the 
original,  perhaps,  of  Fergusson's  lament  on  the  state  of 
neglect  of  the  then  deserted  mansion  of  royalty,  where 

'  the  thistle  springs 
In  domicile  of  ancient  Kings, 
Without  a  patriot  to  regret 
Our  palace  and  our  ancient  state.' 

A  third  volume  was  announced  for  publication  *  about 


JAMES  BOSWELL  27 

eighteen  months  hence/  but  the  public  had  enough  of 
this  coagulated  jargon  as  Carlyle  would  have  styled  it, 
and  critics  and  readers  are  spared  the  task  of  its  con- 
sideration. 

Yet  all  this  time  he  was  in  the  enjoyment  of  the 
best  company  that  Edinburgh  could  afford ;  he  was  ad- 
mitted a  member  of  the  Select  Society,  and  his  circle 
embraced  such  men  as  Lord  Somerville,  Lord  Hailes, 
Dr  Blair,  Kames,  Robertson,  Hume,  Home,  Jupiter 
Carlyle  and  others.  'Lord  Auchinleck,'  he  quaintly 
adds,  'took  the  trouble  himself  to  give  him  a  regular 
course  of  instruction  in  law,  a  circumstance  of  singular 
benefit,  and  of  which  Mr  Boswell  has  ever  expressed  a 
strong  and  grateful  sense.'  But  his  sense  was  not  such 
as  to  restrain  him  from  a  mock-heroic  correspondence 
with  Andrew  Erskine,  brother  of  the  Earl  of  Kellie. 
Erskine  must  have  been  possessed  of  some  parts,  for  he 
was  the  correspondent  of  Burns  and  was  intimate  with 
George  Thomson  the  composer,  yet  we  can  fancy  the 
consternation  of  the  old  judge  when  this  farrago  of  the 
new  humour  was  published  in  London  in  1763.  Writ- 
ing from  his  father's  house,  he  thus  begins  : — c  Dear 
Erskine,  no  ceremony  I  beseech  you !  Give  me  your 
hand.  How  is  my  honest  Captain  Andrew?  How 

goes  it  with  the  elegant  Lady  A ?  the  lovely,  sighing 

Lady   J ?  and   how,  oh   how,  does    that    glorious 

luminary  Lady  B do?    you  see  I  retain  my  usual 

volatility.  The  Boswells,  you  know,  came  over  from 
Normandy  with  William  the  Conqueror;  and  some  of 
us  possess  the  spirit  of  our  ancestors,  the  French.  I 
do,  for  one.  A  pleasant  spirit  it  is.  Vive  la  bagatelle  is 
the  maxim.  A  light  heart  may  bid  defiance  to  fortune.' 
Again  the  old  man  would  find  'Allow  me  a  few 
more  words.  I  live  here  in  a  remote  corner  of  an  old 
ruinous  house,  where  my  ancestors  have  been  very 


28  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

jovial.  What  a  solemn  idea  rushes  on  my  mind !  They 
are  all  gone :  I  must  follow.  Well,  and  what  then  ? 
Let  me  shift  about  to  another  subject.  The  best  I  can 
think  of  is  a  sound  sleep ;  so  good-night/  In  fact,  like 
Sir  Fretful  Plagiary  in  the  Critic^  Bozzy  was  so  covetous 
of  popularity  that  he  would  rather  be  abused  than  be 
not  mentioned  at  all.  Little  augury,  too,  of  success  at 
the  bar  could  his  father  find  in  the  following  portrait  of 
his  son :  '  the  author  of  the  Ode  to  Tragedy  is  a  most 
excellent  man ;  he  is  of  an  ancient  family  in  the  west  of 
Scotland,  upon  which  he  values  himself  not  a  little.  At 
his  nativity  there  appeared  omens  of  his  future  great- 
ness ;  his  parts  are  bright,  and  his  education  has  been 
good;  he  has  travelled  in  post-chaises  miles  without 
number;  he  is  fond  of  seeing  much  of  the  world;  he 
eats  of  every  good  dish,  especially  apple  pie ;  he  drinks 
old  hock;  he  has  a  very  fine  temper;  he  is  somewhat 
of  a  humourist,  and  a  little  tinctured  with  pride ;  he  has 
a  good,  manly  countenance,  and  he  owns  himself  to 
be  amorous;  he  has  infinite  vivacity;  yet  is  at  times 
observed  to  have  a  melancholy  cast.' 

Nothing  but  the  most  obtuse  vanity  could  ever  have 
induced  Bozzy  to  publish  all  this.  *  Curiosity/  he 
declares  in  the  preface,  'is  the  most  prevalent  of  all 
our  passions,  and  the  curiosity  for  reading  letters  is  the 
most  prevalent  of  all  kinds  of  curiosity.  Had  any 
man  in  the  three  kingdoms  found  the  following  letters 
directed,  sealed,  and  addressed,  with  post-marks — pro- 
vided he  could  have  done  so  honestly — he  would  have 
read  every  one  of  them.'  There  is  the  true  Bos  well  in 
this  characteristic  confession,  the  Boswell  that  read  in 
the  private  diaries  of  Johnson,  and,  with  an  eye  to  bio- 
graphical materials,  had  admitted  an  impulse  to  carry 
them  off,  and  never  see  him  more.  'Why,  sir/  said 
the  doctor,  '  I  do  not  think  you  could  have  helped  it.' 


JAMES  BOSWELL  29 

After  this  it  was  no  wonder  that  his  father  was  in- 
duced to  allow  his  return  to  London,  *  Where  a  man 
may  soap  his  own  beard,  and  enjoy  whatever  is  to  be  had 
in  this  transitory  state  of  things,  and  every  agreeable 
whim  may  be  indulged  without  censure.'  The  Duke  of 
Queensbery,  the  patron  of  Gay,  was  one  of  those  to 
whom  he  was  recommended  now  that  he  inclined  to 
'persist  in  his  fondness  for  the  Guards,  or  rather,  in 
truth,  for  the  metropolis/  but  he  suspected  some  arrange- 
ment between  his  father  and  the  Duke  by  which  the 
commission  was  delayed.  For  some  months  he  spent 
a  random  life  as  the  occupier  of  Temple's  chambers  in 
the  vicinity  of  Johnson.  Little  could  be  expected  of 
the  friend  of  Churchill  and  Wilkes,  yet  Boswell  now  was 
at  the  turning  point  of  his  career. 

'This  is  to  me,'  he  writes  in  his  great  work,  'a 
memorable  year ;  for  in  it  I  had  the  happiness  to 
obtain  the  acquaintance  of  that  extraordinary  man  whose 
memoirs  I  am  now  writing;  an  acquaintance  which  I 
shall  ever  esteem  as  one  of  the  most  fortunate  circum- 
stances of  my  life.'  We  have  seen  how  Lord  Hailes, 
had  on  the  1758  circuit,  mentioned  to  him  the  name  of 
Johnson ;  how  in  Glasgow  Gentleman  had  given  him  a 
representation  of  '  dictionary  Johnson ; '  how  Derrick  in 
1760,  during  his  first  visit  to  London,  had  promised  to 
introduce  this  youth  of  twenty  to  the  great  dictator  of 
literature;  and  Sheridan,  the  father  of  the  dramatist, 
when  in  Edinburgh  in  1761,  giving  public  lectures 
on  elocution,  had  made  a  similar  promise.  But  on 
his  return  to  London  at  the  end  of  1762,  Boswell  had 
found  that  Sheridan  had  quarrelled  with  Johnson,  and 
Derrick  had  retired  to  Bath  as  master  of  the  ceremonies 
in  succession  to  Beau  Nash.  Luckily  Derrick  had 
before  introduced  his  friend  to  Davies,  the  bookseller 
in  Covent  Garden,  who  as  c  one  of  the  best  imitators  of 


30  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Johnson's  voice  and  manner '  only  increased  the  ardour 
of  Boswell  for  the  meeting.  Now  the  hour  was  come 
and  the  man.  Yet  surely  never  could  there  have  been 
a  more  apparently  unpropitious  time  chosen.  Number 
45  of  the  North  Briton  denouncing  Bute  and  his  Scotch 
favourites  had  appeared  on  April  23rd.  The  minister 
had  bowed  to  the  storm  and  resigned,  while  the  writer 
of  the  libel  had  been  arrested  under  a  general  warrant 
and  discharged  on  the  3oth  of  the  month  under  appeal, 
either  to  be  hanged,  thought  Adam  Smith,  or  to  get 
Bute  impeached  in  six  months.  Alexander  Cruden,  of 
Concordance  fame,  was  rambling  over  London  in  his 
lucid  interval  like  an  inverted  Old  Mortality,  busy  with 
a  sponge  obliterating  every  hated  c  45  '  scrawled  over 
the  walls  and  every  conceivable  spot  in  the  city  against 
his  country.  Yet  at  such  an  hour  it  was  that  the 
famous  meeting  of  Johnson  and  his  biographer  took 
place. 

'At  last,  on  Monday  the  i6th  of  May,  when  I  was 
sitting  in  Mr  Davies'  back-parlour,  after  having  drunk 
tea  with  him  and  Mrs  Davies,  Johnson  unexpectedly 
came  into  the  shop ;  and  Mr  Davies  having  perceived 
him  through  the  glass  door  in  the  room  in  which  we 
were  sitting,  advancing  towards  us, — he  announced  his 
awful  approach  to  me,  somewhat  in  the  manner  of  an 
actor  in  the  part  of  Horatio,  when  he  addresses  Hamlet 
on  the  appearance  of  his  father's  ghost,  "  Look,  my  lord, 
it  comes."  I  found  that  I  had  a  very  perfect  idea  of 
Johnson's  figure,  from  the  portrait  of  him  painted  by  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds.  .  .  .  Mr  Davies  mentioned  my  name, 
and  respectfully  introduced  me  to  him.  I  was  much 
agitated;  and  recollecting  his  prejudice  against  the 
Scotch,  of  which  I  had  heard  much,  I  said  to  Davies, 
"Don't  tell  where  I  come  from." — "From  Scotland," 
cried  Davies  roguishly.  "  Mr  Johnson,"  said  I,  "  I  do 


JAMES  BOSWELL  31 

indeed  come  from  Scotland,  but  I  cannot  help  it."  .  .  . 
"  That,  sir,  I  find  is  what  a  very  great  many  of  your 
countrymen  cannot  help."  This  stroke  stunned  me  a 
good  deal;  and  when  we  had  sat  down,  I  felt  myself 
not  a  little  embarrassed,  and  apprehensive  of  what  might 
come  next.  .  .  .  Eager  to  take  any  opening  to  get 
into  conversation  with  him,  I  ventured  to  say,  "  Oh,  sir, 
I  cannot  think  Mr  Garrick  would  grudge  such  a  trifle 
to  you."  "Sir,"  said  he,  with  a  stern  look,  "I  have 
known  David  Garrick  longer  than  you  have  done,  and 
I  know  no  right  you  have  to  talk  to  me  on  the  subject." 
Perhaps  I  deserved  this  check/  etc.,  etc. 

Next  day  Boswell  called  on  Davies,  who  assured  him 
that  the  doctor  would  not  take  it  amiss  if  he  were  to 
visit  him  ;  and  so,  a  week  later,  '  after  being  entertained 
by  the  witty  sallies  of  Messieurs  Thornton,  Wilkes, 
Churchill  and  Lloyd/  from  whom  he  would  hear 
plenty  of  vigorous  abuse  of  his  country,  and  whose 
names  we  may  take  it  as  certain  were  not  mentioned 
to  his  new  friend,  Boswell  boldly  repaired  to  Johnson. 
Nothing  is  more  striking  than  the  contrast  between 
the  hitherto  reckless  Bozzy  and  the  easy  assurance 
and  composure  with  which  he  faces  Johnson,  sits  up 
with  the  sage,  sups  at  the  Mitre,  leads  the  conversa- 
tion, and  apparently  holds  his  own  in  the  discussions. 
Doubtless,  the  '  facility  of  manners  '  which  Adam 
Smith  has  said  was  a  feature  of  the  man,  was  here 
of  service  to  him,  and  no  less  so  would  have  been  the 
flattering  way  in  which  he  managed  to  inform  Johnson 
of  his  reputation  over  the  Border.  Boswell  was  not 
slow  to  write  to  Lord  Hailes,  knowing  full  well  how 
the  report  of  such  an  acquaintance  and  friendship  would 
be  welcome  at  Auchinleck  as  the  signs  of  an  approach- 
ing reformation.  Goldsmith,  whom  he  met  shortly  after, 
he  entertained  at  the  Mitre  with  a  party  of  friends, 


32  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

among  whom  was  the  Rev.  Dr  John  Ogilvie,  the  author 
of  some  portentous  and  completely  forgotten  epics,  but 
who  is  not  yet  quite  lost  to  sight  as  the  writer  of  the 
sixty-second  paraphrase  of  Scripture,  '  Lo !  in  the  last 
of  days  behold.'  A  subsequent  'evening  by  ourselves  ' 
he  describes  to  Lord  Hailes  in  the  wariest'  manner,  so 
as  to  secure  his  father's  consent  to  a  plan  of  travel. 
The  old  judge  had  wished  his  son  to  follow  the  pro- 
fession of  law  which  had  now  in  their  family  become 
quite  hereditary,  and  had  coupled  this  with  a  scheme 
of  study  at  Utrecht,  after  the  plan  he  had  himself 
followed  at  Leyden.  A  compromise  had,  in  fact,  been 
arranged  by  which  this  was  to  be  pursued,  and  the 
career  of  arms  dropped.  Nothing  can  be  more  adroit 
than  the  way  in  which  the  young  hopeful  about  to 
embark  on  the  grand  tour  manages  in  his  despatch 
to  his  lordship,  with  an  eye  to  the  Home  Office,  to 
suggest  the  furtherance  of  his  own  ideas  under  the 
supposed  guise  of  Johnson's  approval.  '  He  advises 
me  to  combat  idleness  as  a  distemper,  to  read  five 
hours  every  day,  but  to  let  inclination  direct  me  what 
to  read.  He  is  a  great  enemy  to  a  stated  plan  of  study. 
He  advises  me  when  abroad  to  go  to  places  where  there 
is  most  to  be  seen  and  learned.  He  is  not  very  fond 
of  the  notion  of  spending  a  whole  winter  in  a  Dutch 
town.  He  thinks  I  may  do  much  more  by  private 
study  than  by  attending  lectures.  He  would  have  me 
to  perambulate  (a  word  in  his  own  style)  Spain,  also 
to  visit  the  northern  kingdoms,  where  more  that  is 
new  is  to  be  seen  than  in  France  or  Italy,  but  he  is  not 
against  me  seeing  these  warmer  regions.' 

Here,  in  fact,  is  the  germ  of  the  tour  to  the  Baltic 
they  had  hoped  when  at  Dunvegan  one  day  to  carry  out, 
for  which  Johnson,  when  in  his  sixty-eighth  year  was 
still  ready,  and  which  Boswell  thought  would  have 


JAMES  BOSWELL  33 

made  them  acquainted  with  the  King  of  Sweden,  and 
the  Empress  of  Russia.  On  a  later  day  of  the  month 
he  asked  his  friend  to  the  Mitre  to  meet  his  uncle  Dr 
John,  '  an  elegant  scholar  and  a  physician  bred  in  the 
School  of  Boerhaave,'  and  George  Dempster,  M.P.  for 
the  Forfar  Burghs.  As  the  latter  was  infected  with 
the  sceptical  views  of  Hume,  there  would  seem  to  have 
been  a  scene,  for  in  the  Life  Johnson  is  made  to  say, 
1 1  have  not  met  with  any  man  for  a  long  time  who  has 
given  me  such  general  displeasure/  but  Boswell,  ever 
with  an  eye  for  copy,  writes  to  Temple,  'it  was  a 
very  fertile  evening,  and  my  journal  is  stored  with  its 
fruits.'  Then  to  Lord  Hailes  he  writes  :  'Entre  nous 
of  Dempster, — Johnson  had  seen  a  pupil  of  Hume 
and  Rousseau  totally  unsettled  as  to  principles.  I 
had  infinite  satisfaction  in  hearing  solid  truth  confuting 
vain  subtilty.  I  thank  God  that  I  have  got  acquainted 
with  Mr  Johnson.  He  has  done  me  infinite  service. 
He  has  assisted  me  to  obtain  peace  of  mind ;  he  has 
assisted  me  to  become  a  rational  Christian ;  I  hope  I 
shall  ever  remain  so.'  Pleasantly  all  this  would  sound 
at  home.  There  would  be  less  now  heard  of  his  father's 
threat  in  May  to  disinherit  him,  and  of  the  son's  appeal 
to  Lord  Hailes  to  intercede  with  him — *  to  have  patience 
with  me  for  a  year  or  two,  and  I  may  be  what  he  pleases.' 
On  July  1 5th  he  has  had  a  long  letter  from  his  father, 
full  of  affection  and  good  counsel.  '  Honest  man,'  he 
\\rites  to  Temple,  'he  is  now  happy.  He  insists  on 
having  my  solemn  promise.  The  only  question  is,  how 
much  I  am  to  promise.'  Then  on  the  25th  he  has  his 
letters  of  credit  and  his  introductions  to  people  in 
Holland.  '  They  have  been  sent  open  for  me  to  seal, 
so  I  have  been  amused  to  see  the  different  modes  of 
treating  that  favourite  subject  myself. '  He  is  to  be 
allowed  ^£240  a  year,  but  he  is  determined  not  to  be 

c 


34  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

straitened,  nor  to  encourage  the  least  narrowness,  but 
to  draw  on  his  father  when  necessary.  Wilkes  had 
gone  to  France,  but  had  let  him  have  some  franks  '  to 
astonish  a  few  North  Britons.'  Parting  for  a  time 
with  Temple,  whose  family  was  now  in  straitened 
circumstances,  he  assures  him  that  their  friendship  should 
be  'an  exalted  comfort'  to  him  in  his  distress,  and 
concludes  characteristically  enough  with  advice  to 
Temple's  younger  brother  in  the  army  for  his  establish- 
ment in  *  solid  notions  of  religion  and  morality.' 

Before  he  bids  his  native  land  good-night,  there  is  a 
final  letter  to  Hailes  with  his  father,  Jortin,  and  the 
actress  all  well  in  his  mind's  eye.  'My  scepticism,' 
he  says,  '  was  not  owing  to  thinking  wrong,  but  to  not 
thinking  at  all.  It  is  a  matter  of  great  moment  to  keep 
a  sense  of  religion  constantly  impressed  upon  our  minds. 
If  that  divine  guest  does  not  occupy  part  of  the  space, 
vain  intruders  will," — the  fine  old  roll  of  Micawber  to 
the  close.  Johnson  on  the  5th  August  started  with  him 
for  Harwich  in  the  stage  coach,  half  in  hopes  of  visiting 
Holland  in  the  summer,  and  accompanying  Bozzy  in  a 
tour  through  the  Netherlands.  *  I  must  see  thee  out 
of  England,'  said  the  old  man  kindly.  On  the  beach 
they  parted,  and  'as  the  vessel  put  out  to  sea,  I  kept 
my  eyes  upon  him  for  a  considerable  time,  while  he 
remained  rolling  his  majestic  frame  in  his  usual  manner; 
and  at  last  I  perceived  him  walk  back  into  the  town 
and  he  disappeared.'  Boswell's  attendance  upon  his  new 
friend  had  not  escaped  the  notice  of  the  doctor's  circle. 
'Who,'  asked  one,  'is  this  Scotch  cur  at  Johnson's 
heels?'  'Not  a  cur,  but  a  bur,'  was  Goldsmith's 
reply,  '  and  he  has  the  faculty  of  sticking.'  With  what 
effect  the  world  was  to  know. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   CONTINENT — CORSICA.    1763-66 

'That's  from  Paoli  of  Corsica. '— GOLDSMITH,  '  The  Good 
Natured  Man* 

1  UTRECHT/  writes  Boswell,  '  seeming  at  first  very  dull 
to  me  after  the  animated  scenes  of  London,  my  spirits 
were  grievously  affected.'  But  the  depression  was  not 
destined  to  last,  and  soon  we  hear  of  his  having  wearied 
of  the  proposed  two  years'  course  of  study.  The 
custom  of  legal  training  in  some  of  the  universities  of 
the  Continent  was  about  this  time  coming  to  a  close, 
though  for  long  it  had  remained  usual,  at  least  with  the 
landed  classes  of  Scotland,  to  secure  such  an  extended 
field  of  study  for  the  bar  by  an  attendance  at  some  of 
the  more  developed  schools  of  jurisprudence  in  Hol- 
land. Cunningham,  the  celebrated  critic  of  Bentley, 
had  given  prelections  in  Leyden,  and  no  reader  of  the 
Heart  of  Midlothian  will  forget  the  laments  of  the 
inimitable  Bartoline  Saddletree  over  his  not  being  sent 
to  Leyden  or  Utrecht  to  study  the  Institutes  and  the 
Pandects.  Since  the  days  of  Gilbert  Jack  at  Leyden, 
the  connection  between  Holland  and  the  Scottish 
universities  had  been  close,  and  the  garrets  of  Amster- 
dam had  been  crowded  before  the  Revolution  by 
refugees  from  both  Scotland  and  England  who  main- 
tained, upon  their  return,  the  ties  they  had  contracted 

35 


36  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

in  their  exile.  Even  Fielding  had  been  sent  to  Leyden 
for  law,  and  just  before  the  visit  of  Boswell,  to  which 
his  father  had  consented  rather  as  a  compromise  than 
from  any  practical  benefit  that  might  ensue,  the  law  of 
Scotland,  largely  based  on  Roman  and  feudal  prece- 
dents, had  received  fresh  extensions  of  conveyancing 
and  other  branches  of  jurisprudence,  through  the  mass 
of  forfeited  estates  brought  into  the  market  after  the 
suppression  of  the  Jacobite  Rebellions.  What  country, 
then,  could  so  rapidly  afford  such  a  course  of  legal 
study  as  the  Protestant  and  commercial  Holland  ?  The 
reputation  of  Boerhaave  had  drawn  medical  students 
from  all  quarters,  and  JBoswelPs  uncle  John,  and  the  cele- 
brated Monro  primus  of  the  Edinburgh  Medical  School 
had  been  among  the  number.  Goldsmith  in  1755 
met  Irish  medical  students  there,  and  some  twenty 
years  before  the  time  we  have  reached  Carlyle  of 
Inveresk  had  found  in  Leyden  '  an  established  lodging- 
house  '  where  his  countrymen,  Gregory  and  Dickson 
were  domiciled,  and  numerous  others,  among  whom  he 
expressly  mentions  Charles  Townshend,  Askew  the 
Greek  scholar,  Johnston  of  Westerhall,  Doddeswell,  after- 
wards Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  and  John  Wilkes  then 
entering,  at  eighteen,  on  the  career  of  profligacy  that 
was  to  render  him  notorious.  Carlyle  describes  their 
meetings  at  each  other's  rooms  twice  or  thrice  a  week, 
when  they  drank  coffee,  supped  on  Dutch  red  herrings, 
eggs  and  salad,  and  never  sat  beyond  the  decent  hour  of 
twelve.  For  such  a  style  of  living  Boswell's  annual 
allowance  of  £240  was  certainly  handsome  in  a  place 
where  the  fuel,  chiefly  peat,  was  the  only  expensive 
item. 

But  such  a  quiet  style  of  life  was  not  congenial  to 
the  lively  tastes  of  our  traveller.  He  soon  tired  of  the 
civil  law  lectures  of  Professor  Trotz,  and  longed  for 


JAMES  BOSWELL  37 

fresh  woods  and  pastures  new.  He  sighed  to  be  upon 
his  travels  again.  Of  his  life  abroad  some  isolated 
notes  may  be  gathered  from  the  Boswelliana,  and,  as 
has  been  mentioned,  he  sought  out  his  relatives  at  the 
Hague  '  of  the  first  fashion/  the  Sommelsdycks,  and 
with  his  facility  of  manners,  and  his  father's  credentials 
to  the  literati  and  scholars  of  the  place,  his  circle  of 
acquaintance  was  large  and  influential.  We  hear  of  an 
intimacy  with  the  Rev.  William  Brown,  minister  of  the 
Scottish  congregation  at  Utrecht,  the  father  of  Principal 
Laurence  Brown  of  Marischal  College,  Aberdeen;  and 
with  Sir  Joseph  Yorke,  whom  he  met  later  in  Ireland, 
then  the  Ambassador  at  the  Hague,  he  would  appear  to 
have  been  acquainted.  But  Sir  Joseph  does  not  seem 
to  have  welcomed  the  easy  manners  of  his  young  friend, 
and  the  dull  life  of  the  burgomasters  was  little  suited 
to  Boswell  who  ridicules  their  portly  figures  and  their 
clothes  which  they  wore  as  if  they  had  been  '  luggage.' 

The  two  years'  course  of  study  was  abruptly  reduced 
to  one.  At  its  close  we  trace  him  at  Berlin  in  July 
1764,  and  in  close  relations  with  the  British  Envoy  at 
the  Prussian  Court.  Fortunately  for  Boswell  this  was 
both  a  countryman  and  a  friend  of  his  father's,  Sir 
Andrew  Mitchell,  the  late  M.P.  for  the  Banff  Burghs. 
By  the  Ambassador  he  was  introduced  to  the  best 
society  in  the  capital,  and  from  Berlin  he  wrote  to  his 
father  representing  the  urgent  necessity  of  extending  his 
travels,  and,  till  the  letter  in  reply  should  arrive,  he  pro- 
ceeded into  Hanover  and  Brunswick.  On  his  return  to 
Berlin  towards  the  end  of  August  he  found  a  letter 
waiting  him  from  Lord  Auchinleck,  who  was  naturally 
chagrined  at  the  breakdown  of  his  scheme  of  com- 
promise. A  visit  to  Paris  he  was  prepared  to  allow,  but 
the  return  of  the  wanderer  to  Utrecht  was  peremptorily 
commanded.  The  family  of  the  Envoy  was  now  at  Spa, 


38  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

but  next  day  Boswell  wrote  him  a  letter  urging  him  to 
intercede  with  his  father  for  the  proposed  extension. 
The  letter  is  a  very  long  one,  and  its  abridgement  even 
is  impossible  here,  but  few  more  Boswellian  productions 
can  be  found.  He  has,  he  tells  Sir  Andrew,  a  melancholy 
disposition,  and  to  escape  from  the  gloom  of  dark 
speculation  he  has  made  excursions  into  the  fields  of 
folly,  and  in  this  tone  of  the  Preacher  in  Ecclesiastes  he 
rambles  on.  The  words  of  St  Paul,  '  I  must  see  Rome,' 
he  finds  are  borne  in  upon  him,  and  such  a  journey 
would  afford  him  the  talk  for  a  lifetime,  the  more  so  that 
he  was  no  libertine  and  disclaimed  all  intentions  of 
travelling  as  Milord  Anglois,  but  simply  as  the  scholar 
and  the  man  of  elegant  curiosity.  Did  not  Sir  Andrew 
as  the  loved  and  respected  friend  of  his  father  think  that 
the  son  had  a  claim  to  protest  before  he  considered  any 
act  regarding  himself  as  passed,  and  would  not  the  Envoy 
remonstrate  or  persuade  the  father  as  to  the  justice  of 
his  wish?  No  reply  was  sent  to  this,  but  the  judge, 
thinking  that  discretion  was  the  wiser  part  in  circum- 
stances where  it  was  useless  to  dictate  without  the  means 
to  enforce  compliance,  yielded  reluctant  consent  to  the 
scheme  of  an  Italian  tour.  Gravely  then  does  Bozzy 
rebuke  Sir  Andrew  and  for  this  occasion  he  forgives 
him,  'for  I  just  say  the  same  to  young  people  when  I 
advise.  Believe  me,'  he  somewhat  irrelevantly  adds, 
1  I  have  a  soul.' 

Fortune  followed  him  wherever  he  turned.  George, 
tenth  Earl  Marischal,  and  brother  of  Frederick  the 
Great's  general,  Marshal  Keith,  had  joined  the  Earl  of 
Mar  in  the  rising  of  1715,  and  had  made  an  ineffectual 
descent  in  1719  on  Glenshiel  with  the  Spaniards.  But 
in  the  '45  he  had  taken  no  part,  and  he  revealed  to  the 
British  Government  the  existence  of  the  Bourbon  Family 
Compact.  In  return,  his  attainder  had  been  removed 


JAMES  BOSWELL  39 

by  George  II.,  and  on  his  brief  visit  to  Scotland  he  had 
lived  with  Boswell's  father  in  Ayrshire,  perhaps  as  a  friend 
of  the  Commissioners  for  the  forfeited  estates,  when  the 
occasion  had  been  seized  by  Macpherson  for  an  ode, 
4  attempted  after  the  manner  of  Pindar/  in  the  fustian 
style  of  the  translator  of  Ossian.  With  him  or  by  his 
credentials  Boswell  went  the  round  of  the  German 
courts,  passing  by  Mannheim  and  Geneva,  reaching  the 
latter  towards  the  end  of  December.  The  reader  is 
struck  with  the  airy  assurance  and  self-possession  which 
the  laureate  of  the  Soapers  and  the  Newmarket  Cub 
manifests  on  the  grand  tour,  conducting  himself  at 
three  and  twenty  with  complete  success  at  the  courts 
of  German  princes,  conversing  with  plenipotentiaries  and 
dignitaries  of  all  sorts  in  French  and  Italian,  for  German 
had  not  yet  risen  into  sufficient  historical  or  diplomatic 
importance  to  add  to  the  linguistic  burdens  of  mankind. 
Lord  Marischal  as  the  governor  of  Neufchatel  had  acted 
as  the  protector  of  Rousseau,  and  so  was  able  to  furnish 
his  companion  with  a  letter  of  introduction,  hinting  at 
his  enthusiastic  nature  and  describing  him  to  the 
philosopher  as  a  visionary  hypochondriac.  Voltaire  he 
interviewed  at  Ferney,  and  he  managed  to  please  the 
great  man  by  repeating — a  characteristic  trait  of  Bozzy, 
who  believed  such  tale-bearing  to  be  vastly  conducive 
to  the  practice  of  benevolence — Johnson's  criticism  upon 
Frederick  the  Great's  writings,  '  such  as  you  may  sup- 
pose Voltaire's  foot-boy  to  do,  who  has  been  his  amanu- 
ensis.' He  broached  the  subject  of  the  philosophy  of 
the  unconscious,  and  was  eager  to  know  how  ideas  for- 
gotten at  the  time  were  yet  later  on  recollected.  The 
other  replied  by  a  quotation  from  Thomson's  Winter 
with  the  writer's  question,  as  to  the  winds, 
'  In  what  far  distant  region  of  the  sky 
Hushed  in  silence  sleep  ye  when  'tis  calm  ? ' 


40  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

The  attempt  to  draw  out  Voltaire  upon  the  tour  to  the 
Hebrides,  which  Boswell  and  Johnson  had  been  vaguely 
talking  over,  produced  only  the  rather  sarcastic  query  if 
he  wished  him  to  accompany  them,  with  a  look  *  as  if  I 
had  talked  of  going  to  the  North  Pole/  Of  his  visit  to 
the  wild  philosopher,  as  he  styles  Rousseau,  we  have  no 
notice,  beyond  the  general  remark  that  they  had  agreed 
to  differ  alike  in  politics  and  religion,  but  that  there  were 
points  oil  nos  times  sont  unies.  The  feudal  dogmas  of 
Boswell  and  his  rigid  adherence  to  his  pet  idea  of  'the 
grand  scheme  of  subordination '  were  of  course  not  likely 
to  be  pleasing  to  the  sceptical  aqua  fortis  of  the  sombre 
Genevese,  with  his  belief  in  the  fraternity  of  mankind 
and  the  greatness  of  the  untutored  Indian. 

Boswell  crossed  the  Alps,  and  either  then  or  upon 
his  homeward  journey  visited  Bologna,  Venice,  and 
Mantua.  He  passed  through  Rome  and,  unknown  to 
either,  may  have  met  Gibbon  in  the  Eternal  City  into 
whose  mind,  some  weeks  before,  'as  I  sat  musing 
among  the  ruins  of  the  Capitol  while  the  bare-footed 
friars  were  singing  vespers  in  the  Temple  of  Jupiter/ 
had  started  the  idea  of  writing  the  Decline  and  Fall. 
In  the  city  he  met  Andrew  Lumsden,  the  Secretary  of 
Prince  Charles  Edward,  but  we  are  not  informed  if  the 
young  Jacobite  of  five,  who  had  prayed  for  the  exiled 
family  now  sought  any  opportunity  of  making  himself 
known  to  the  object  of  his  devotion.  Naples  brought 
him  into  the  more  congenial  society  of  Wilkes  with 
whom,  he  says,  he  '  enjoyed  many  classical  scenes  with 
peculiar  relish/  When  Churchill  had  died  at  Boulogne 
in  the  arms  of  Wilkes,  the  latter  had  retired  to  Naples 
to  inscribe  his  sorrow  '  in  the  close  style  of  the  ancients* 
upon  an  urn  of  alabaster  which  had  been  the  gift  of 
Winckelmann,  and  in  that  city  now  he  was,  as  the 
literary  executor,  preparing  annotations  on  the  works  of 


JAMES  BOSWELL  41 

Churchill.  Boswell  managed  with  his  curious  want  of 
tact  in  such  matters,  fitting  the  man  who  could  suggest 
cards  to  a  dying  friend  with  an  uneasy  conscience,  to 
hint  that  the  poet  had  '  bounced  into  the  regions  below/ 
and  to  render  the  //  Bruto  Inglese,  by  which  the  papers 
of  the  land  referred  to  Wilkes  and  liberty,  by  a  version 
significant  of  the  notorious  ugliness  of  his  gay  acquaint- 
ance. Naples,  as  with  Milton,  was  the  limit  of  his  tour, 
and  from  it  he  returned  to  Rome.  He  reached  that 
city  in  April  1765,  and  dispatched  a  letter  to  Rousseau, 
then  '  living  in  romantick  retirement '  in  Switzerland, 
requesting  his  promised  introduction  to  the  Corsican 
general,  'which  if  he  refused,  I  should  certainly  go 
without  it,  and  probably  be  hanged  as  a  spy.1  The 
wild  philosopher  was  as  good  as  his  word,  and  the  letter 
met  the  traveller  at  Florence.  *  The  charms  of  sweet 
Siena  detained  me  no  longer  than  they  should  have 
done,  I  required  the  hardy  air  of  Corsica  to  brace  me, 
after  the  delights  of  Tuscany/  an  enigmatical  turn  of 
expression  upon  which  light  is  thrown  later,  when  we 
discuss  the  love  affairs  of  Boswell,  by  a  reference  to  a 
dark-eyed  '  signora '  on  whom  the  tender  traveller  had 
glanced.  At  Leghorn  he  was  within  one  day's  sail  of 
Corsica. 

Pascal  Paoli  was  the  Garibaldi  of  his  day.  When 
his  father  in  1738  had  been  driven  from  the  island  by 
the  French,  he  had  retired  with  him  to  Naples  where 
he  entered  a  military  college  and  followed  the  profession 
of  arms.  The  way  was  paved  for  his  return  by  the 
disturbances  in  the  island  in  1755,  and  so  successful 
was  he  in  his  guerilla  warfare  as  general  against  the 
Genoese,  the  owners  of  Corsica,  that  they  were  speedily 
driven  to  sue  for  peace.  It  was  in  a  sort  of  lull  in  the 
storm  of  hostilities  that  our  traveller  made  his  unexpected 
appearance,  and  the  adroit  way  in  which  he  managed  to 


42  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

lay  his  plans  of  action  and  to  carry  them  out  with  such 
complete  success  calls  for  our  admiration.  In  his  Tour 
he  simply  says  that  *  having  resolved  to  pass  some  years 
abroad  (this  is  excellent,  after  his  letter  to  Sir  Andrew) 
for  my  instruction  and  entertainment,  I  conceived  a 
design  of  visiting  the  Island  of  Corsica.  I  wished  for 
something  more  than  just  the  common  course  of  what 
is  called  the  tour  of  Europe,  and  Corsica  occurred  to 
me  as  a  place  where  nobody  else  had  been.'  It  may 
have  been  suggested  to  him  by  Rousseau,  who  had 
been  engaged  in  some  vague  scheme  of  philandering 
philanthropy  by  which  the  wild  philosopher  was  to  play 
the  Solon  and  the  Lycurgus  of  the  distressed  islanders, 
and  establish  a  fresh  code  of  laws  upon  the  basis  of  his 
new  fraternity,  but  with  which  'this  steady  patriot  of 
the  world  alone/  as  Canning  styles  him,  'the  friend 
of  every  country  but  his  own,'  managed  to  mix  in  a 
much  more  practical  way  some  not  very  honourable,  if 
characteristic,  intrigues  for  the  surrender  of  the  island 
to  France. 

Bozzy,  at  all  events,  was  determined  to  make  a  bold 
bid  for  fame.  Nothing  like  this  had  occurred,  as  an 
opening,  during  all  his  tour.  The  dangers  of  the  plan 
were  fully  known  to  him,  and  the  possibility  was  laid 
before  his  eyes  of  capture  at  the  hands  of  the  Barbary 
corsairs  and  a  term  of  imprisonment  at  Algiers.  Our 
adventurer  waited  on  the  commodore  in  command  of 
the  British  squadron  in  the  bay  of  Leghorn,  and  he 
was  provided  with  a  passport,  the  value  of  which 
against  the  threatened  dangers  does  not  sufficiently 
appear.  Before  he  left  Leghorn,  his  proposed  visit 
had  come  to  be  regarded  in  a  very  serious  light  by 
Italian  politicians.  They  saw  in  him  an  envoy  from 
the  British  intrusted  with  powers  to  negotiate  a  treaty 
with  Corsica,  and  all  disclaimers  of  any  such  intention 


JAMES  BOSWELL  43 

were  politely  treated  as  an  evasion.  Bozzy  was  in 
consequence  viewed  as  '  a  very  close  young  man/ 
a  trait  that  at  no  time  of  his  life  was  ever  applicable 
to  James  Boswell,  on  whom,  indeed,  the  advice  given 
by  Sir  Henry  Wotton  to  Milton  would  have  been 
thrown  away.  Putting  out  to  sea  in  a  Tuscan  vessel 
bound  for  Capo  Corso  for  wine,  he  had  two  days  to 
spend  on  board  in  consequence  of  a  dead  calm.  '  At 
sunset/  he  says,  *  all  the  people  in  the  ship  sang  Ave 
Maria  with  great  devotion  and  some  melody.'  One 
recalls  the  similar  circumstances  under  which  Cardinal 
Newman  found  himself  becalmed  on  the  orange-boat 
in  the  Straits  of  Bonifacio.  For  some  hours  he  had 
put  himself  in  spirits  by  taking  a  hand  at  the  oar,  and 
at  seven  in  the  evening  of  the  second  day  they  landed 
in  the  harbour  of  Centuri.  He  delivered  his  credentials, 
and  on  Sunday  heard  a  Corsican  sermon,  where  the 
preacher  told  of  Catharine  of  Siena  who  wished  to  be 
laid  in  the  mouth  of  the  awful  pit,  that  she  might  stop 
it  up,  and  so  prevent  the  falling  in  of  more  souls. 
'  I  confess,  my  brethren/  cried  the  friar,  *  I  have  not 
such  zeal,  but  I  do  what  I  can,  I  warn  you  how  to 
avoid  it.' 

At  Corte,  the  capital  of  the  island,  he  waited  boldly 
upon  the  Supreme  Council.  He  was  gravely  received, 
as  befitted  a  supposed  British  envoy,  and  lodged  in 
the  apartment  of  Paoli  in  a  Franciscan  convent.  Next 
day,  the  old  petitioner  for  a  commission  in  the  Guards 
found  the  first  and  last  military  experience  of  his  life. 
Three  French  deserters  waited  on  him  in  the  belief 
that  he  came  to  recruit  soldiers  for  Scotland,  and 
'  begged  to  have  the  honour  of  going  along  with  me.' 
Nor  was  the  idea  so  absurd  as  he  seems  to  have  viewed 
it,  for  from  the  Scots  Magazine  of  a  somewhat  later 
date  we  learn  that  British  Volunteers  and  Highlanders 


44  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

disbanded  after  the  wars  had  been  enlisted  in  the 
service  of  Paoli.  But  it  is  not  improbable  that  the 
deserters  had  heard  of  Boswell's  nationality  from  the 
woman  of  Penrith  whom  he  found  in  the  island, 
married  to  a  French  soldier  in  the  army  of  the 
Pretender,  whose  fortunes  she  had  followed  when  they 
had  passed  through  Carlisle  on  the  retreat  from  Derby. 
Another  feature  of  Boswell,  one  whose  consideration 
and  explanation  we  shall  attempt  later  on,  now  for 
the  first  time  meets  us,  his  inveterate  love  for  in- 
terviewing criminals,  and  accordingly,  'as  I  wished 
to  see  all  things  in  Corsica/  he  had  a  meeting  with 
the  hangman  who  seemed  sensible  of  his  situation. 
The  inhabitants  crowded  round  him  at  a  village  as 
he  advanced,  and  questioned  the  traveller,  as  Coleridge 
at  Valetta  found  himself  similarly  interrogated,  as  to 
his  professing  himself  a  Christian  when  he  did  not 
believe  in  the  Pope — e  perche,  and  why  ?  The  old 
candidate  for  the  priesthood  managed  to  deftly  evade 
this  query  by  an  assurance  that  in  Britain  the  people 
were  too  far  off  and  in  a  theological  climate  of  their 
own.  He  was  in  the  highest  humour,  and  in  this 
unusual  flow  of  spirits  he  harangued  the  men  of 
Bastelica  with  great  fluency,  getting,  however,  at 
Sollacaro  somewhat  nervous  as  the  interview  with  the 
Corsican  leader  drew  nigh.  Paoli  lived  in  constant 
dread  of  assassination,  and  the  sudden  arrival  of  this 
mysterious  stranger  was  strongly  calculated  to  arouse 
suspicions.  For  ten  minutes,  in  silence,  he  looked  at 
Boswell,  who  broke  in  with  the  remark  that  he  was 
a  gentleman  from  Scotland  upon  his  travels  and  had 
lately  visited  Rome  from  which,  having  seen  the  ruins 
of  one  brave  people,  he  was  now  come  to  view  the  rise 
of  another.  The  general  was  not  quite  set  at  ease  by 
this  sententiously  balanced  sentence,  and  years  after  he 


UNIVERSITY 
\ 

JAMES 

told  Miss  Burney  about  his  impressions  at  the  time  of 
the  mysterious  stranger.  It  shews  the  ruling  passion 
strong  in  life,  and  that  Bos  well,  as  '  the  chiel'  amang 
them  takin'  notes,'  forgot  the  rules  of  ordinary  courtesy 
and  prudence  in  the  gratification  of  his  darling  method. 
'  He  came  to  my  country  sudden,'  said  Paoli  in  his 
broken  English,  'and  he  fetched  me  some  letters  of 
recommending  him.  And  I  supposed,  in  my  mente  he 
was  in  the  privacy  one  espy ;  for  I  look  away  from  him 
to  my  other  companies,  and  when  I  look  back  to  him 
I  behold  it  in  his  hands  his  tablet,  and  one  pencil.  O, 
he  was  at  the  work,  I  give  it  you  my  honour,  of  writing 
down  all  what  I  say  to  some  persons  whatsoever  in  the 
room.  I  was  angry  enough,  pretty  much  so.  But 
soon  I  found  out  I  was  myself  the  monster  he  came 
to  observe.  O,  he  is  a  very  good  man  Mr  Boswell  at 
the  bottom,  so  witty,  cheerful,  so  talkable.  But  at  the 
first,  Oh  I  was  indeed  fache  of  the  sufficient.'  This 
first  glimpse  of  Bozzy  at  work  is  delightful.  He  was 
in  fact  "making  himself,"  all  unknown  the  while,  as 
Shortreed  said  of  Scott  over  the  Liddesdale  raids. 

He  dined  with  the  general  and  suite.  In  spite  of, 
perhaps  by  very  reason  of,  his  protestations  of  having 
no  diplomatic  mission,  the  highest  attention  was  shewn 
him  as  an  accredited  envoy  from  St  James'.  In  the 
morning  chocolate  was  served  up  to  him  on  a  silver 
salver  with  the  national  arms ;  he  rode  out  on  the 
general's  horse,  with  guards  marching  before  him. 
Paoli  knew  sufficient  English  to  maintain  the  dialogue, 
having  picked  up  some  slight  knowledge  of  the  tongue 
from  Irish  refugee  officers  in  the  Neapolitan  service. 
His  library  was  turned  over  by  his  inquisitive  guest, 
who  found  among  the  books  some  odd  volumes  of  The 
Spectator  and  The  Tatler,  Pope's  Essay  on  Man, 
Gulliver's  Travels^  and  Barclay's  Apology  for  the 


46  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Quakers.  His  good  humour,  as  it  had  won  on  the 
general,  endeared  the  supposed  ambasciadore  Inglese  to 
the  peasants,  and  he  had  a  Corsican  dress  made  for 
him.  Of  that  dress — '  in  which  I  walked  about  with 
an  air  of  true  satisfaction ' — every  one  who  has  heard 
of  James  Boswell  has  read,  and  it  is  inseparable 
somehow  from  our  conceptions  of  the  man  and 
writer. 

We  select  from  this  Corsican  Tour — the  least  known 
to  the  general  reader  of  BoswelPs  three  great  works — 
what  seems  to  us  the  gem  of  the  book : — '  One  day 
they  must  needs  hear  me  play  upon  my  German  flute. 
To  have  told  my  honest  natural  visitants,  'Really, 
gentlemen,  I  play  very  ill,'  and  put  on  such  airs  as  we 
do  in  our  genteel  companies,  would  have  been  highly 
ridiculous.  I  therefore  immediately  complied  with 
their  request.  I  gave  them  one  or  two  Italian  airs,  and 
then  some  of  our  beautiful  old  Scots  tunes,  Gilderoy, 
The  Lass  o'  Pattis  Mill,  Corn  Riggs  are  Bonny:  The 
pathetick  simplicity  and  pastoral  gaiety  of  the  Scots 
musick  will  always  please  those  who  have  the  genuine 
feelings  of  nature.  The  Corsicans  were  charmed  with 
the  specimens  I  gave  them,  though  I  may  now  say  that 
they  were  very  indifferently  performed.  My  good 
friends  insisted  also  to  have  an  English  song  from  me. 
I  endeavoured  to  please  them  in  this,  too.  I  sung 
them  c  Hearts  of  Oak  are  our  Ships,  Hearts  of  Oak  are 
our  Men.'  I  translated  it  into  Italian  for  them,  and 
never  did  I  see  men  so  delighted  as  the  Corsicans  were. 
'  Cuore  di  quercoj  cried  they,  '  bravo  Inglese  1 '  It 
was  quite  a  joyous  riot.  I  fancied  myself  to  be  a 
recruiting  sea  officer.  I  fancied  all  my  chorus  of 
Corsicans  aboard  the  British  fleet.' 

How  admirable  is  the  style  of  all  this,  equal  quite  to 
Goldsmith's  best  and  lightest  touch  !  Exquisite,  too,  is 


JAMES  BOSWELL  47 

that  picture  of  Bozzy,  as  the  rollicking  British  stage-tar 
of  tradition,  in  his  rendering  of  Garrick's  song,  the 
gems  from  the  Opera  and  the  national  melodies. 
Allan  Ramsay's  song  in  Corsica  is  to  be  equalled 
only  by  Goldsmith  on  his  tour  when  he  played,  but 
not  for  amusement,  Barbara  Allan  and  Johnny  Arm- 
strongs Good  Night  before  the  doors  of  Italian  convents 
and  Flemish  homesteads. 

But  the  highstrung  Bozzy  had  to  experience  a  revul- 
sion of  low  feelings  to  which  he  was  ever  prone.  He  is 
soon  in  a  sort  of  Byronic  fit,  and  he  continues  in  a  strain 
with  which  we  should  have  not  credited  the  *  gay  classic 
friend  of  Jack  Wilkes '  and  of  that  Sienese  signora^  unless 
he  had  turned  evidence  against  himself.  He  declared 
his  feelings  to  Paoli,  as  he  had  done  to  Johnson,  whose 
curt  advice  had  been  not  to  confuse  or  resolve  the  com- 
mon consequences  of  irregularity  into  an  unalterable 
decree  of  destiny.  To  the  general  he  now  attributed 
his  feeling  of  the  vanity  of  life,  the  exhaustion  in  the 
very  heat  of  youth  of  all  the  sweets  of  being,  and  the 
incapacity  for  taking  part  in  active  life  to  his  'meta- 
physical researches,'  his  reasoning  beyond  his  depth  on 
such  subjects  as  it  is  not  given  to  man  to  know.  These 
hesitances  the  other  wisely  pushed  aside  with  the 
soldierly  advice  to  strengthen  his  mind  by  the  perusal  of 
Livy  and  Plutarch.  In  return  Bozzy  gave  an  imitation  of 
'  my  revered  friend  Mr  Samuel  Johnson/  little  dreaming 
that  all  three  would  one  day  be  intimate  in  London, 
and  the  general's  house  in  Portman  Square  be  always  at 
the  traveller's  disposal.  From  the  palace,  as  he  styles 
it,  of  Paoli,  Nov.  1765  he  wrote  to  Johnson,  as  he  had 
done  before,  *  from  a  kind  of  superstition  agreeable  to 
him  as  to  myself,'  from  what  he  calls  loca  solennia — 
places  of  solemn  interest.  '  I  dare  to  call  this  a  spirited 
tour.  I  dare  to  challenge  your  approbation ; '  and, 


48  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

reading  it  twenty  years  later  in  the  original  which  the 
old  man  had  preserved,  he  found  it  full  of  '  generous 
enthusiasm.'  No  account  of  the  continental  travels  of 
Boswell  would  be  complete  without  the  reproduction  of 
his  letter  to  the  doctor  from  Wittenberg.  It  is  one  of 
the  most  important  for  the  more  subtle  shades  of 
psychology  in  the  writer's  character. 

'  Sunday ',  Sept.  30,  1764. 
MY    EVER    DEAR    AND     MUCH     RESPECTED    SlR, YOU 

know  my  solemn  enthusiasm  of  mind.  You  love  me 
for  it,  and  I  respect  myself  for  it,  because  in  so  far  I 
resemble  Mr  Johnson.  You  will  be  agreeably  surprized 
when  you  learn  the  reason  of  my  writing  this  letter.  I 
am  at  Wittenberg  in  Saxony.  I  am  in  the  old  church 
where  the  Reformation  was  first  preached,  and  where 
some  of  the  Reformers  lie  interred.  I  cannot  resist  the 
serious  pleasure  of  writing  to  Mr  Johnson  from  the  tomb 
of  Melancthon.  My  paper  rests  upon  the  gravestone  of 
that  great  and  good  man  who  was  undoubtedly  the  best 
of  all  the  Reformers.  ...  At  this  tomb,  then,  my  ever 
dear  and  respected  friend !  I  vow  to  thee  an  eternal 
attachment  It  shall  be  my  study  to  do  what  I  can  to 
render  your  life  happy  :  and  if  you  die  before  me,  I  shall 
endeavour  to  do  honour  to  your  memory  and,  elevated 
by  the  remembrance  of  you,  persist  in  noble  piety.  May 
God,  the  father  of  all  beings,  ever  bless  you  !  and  may 
you  continue  to  love  your  most  affectionate  friend,  and 
devoted  servant, — JAMES  BOSWELL.' 

So  early  had  Boswell  made  his  resolve  to  be  the 
biographer  of  Johnson.  On  the  very  day  of  his 
introduction  to  him,  he  had  taken  notes  of  all  that 
had  passed  in  Davies'  back-parlour.  He  was  none  of 
the  men  that  do  things  by  halves,  and  blunder  into 


JAMES  BOSWELL  49 

a  kind  of  success,  as  some  of  his  depreciators  have 
thought. 

Six  weeks  he  had  been  in  Corsica.  The  first  day  of 
December  saw  him  land  at  Genoa  on  his  return,  Lyons 
was  reached  on  the  third  day  of  the  new  year,  Paris  one 
week  later.  Here  Rousseau  who  had  preceded  him  to 
London  had  provided  him  with  a  curious  commission, 
the  bringing  over  into  England  of  his  mistress  Therese 
Levasseur.  The  easy-going  Hume  thus  announces 
the  fact  to  his  friend  the  Countess  de  Boufflers. 
'  Mademoiselle  sets  out  with  a  friend  of  mine,  a  young 
gentleman,  very  good  humoured,  very  agreeable,  and 
very  mad.  He  has  such  a  rage  for  literature  that  I 
dread  some  event  fatal  to  my  friend's  honour.  For 
remember  the  story  of  Terentia  who  was  first  married 
to  Cicero,  then  to  Sallust,  and  at  last  in  her  old  age 
married  a  young  nobleman,  who  imagined  that  she 
must  possess  some  secret  which  would  convey  to  him 
eloquence  and  genius/  A  letter  he  found  waiting 
from  Johnson,  together  with  one  announcing  the  death 
of  his  mother.  No  more  was  heard  about  a  second 
year  at  Utrecht.  He  crossed  to  London,  and  was 
again  with  his  old  friend,  who  had  moved  from  the 
Temple  to  a  good  house  in  Johnson's  Court,  in  Fleet 
Street.  Goldsmith  was  no  longer  the  obscure  writer 
whom  he  had  left  behind,  but  the  author  of  the  Vicar 
of  Wakefield  and  the  Traveller.  The  club  had  been 
founded.  He  was  encouraged  by  the  sage  to  publish 
his  account  of  his  travels  in  Corsica — '  you  cannot 
go  to  the  bottom,  but  all  that  you  tell  us  will  be 
new.1 

He  dined  at  the  Mitre  as  of  old,  and  presented 
Temple  to  Johnson.  No  word  about  his  companion 
across  the  Channel,  naturally  enough,  reached  the  old 
man's  ears,  but  he  mentioned  Rousseau ;  though  he 


go  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

recognised  he  was  now  in  a  new  moral  atmosphere 
where  every  attempt  was  resented  to  *  unhinge  or 
weaken  good  principles.'  On  a  modified  defence  of 
the  philosopher,  whose  works  he  professed  had  afforded 
him  edification,  he  did  venture,  but  thinking  it  enough 
to  defend  one  at  a  time  Boswell  said  nothing  '  of  my 
gay  friend  Wilkes.'  In  the  Paris  salons  of  that  winter 
Wilkes,  Sterne,  Foote,  Hume,  and  Rousseau,  had  been 
the  received  lions.  Hume  had  taken  up  the  wild 
philosopher  whose  melodramatic  Armenian  dress  had 
been  the  attraction  at  the  houses  of  the  leaders  of 
society,  the  ladies  who  (says  Horace  Walpole  who  was 
there  this  year)  '  violated  all  the  duties  of  life  and  gave 
very  pretty  suppers.'  It  was  the  day  of  Anglomania  on 
the  Continent,  when  the  name  of  Chatham  was  a  name 
to  conjure  with,  and  Hume  was  expounding  deism  to 
the  great  ladies, — '  when  the  footmen  were  in  the  room/ 
adds  the  shocked  Horace, — lionizing  Hume  'who  is  the 
only  thing  they  believe  in  implicitly;  which  they  must 
do,  for  I  defy  them  to  understand  any  language  that 
he  speaks,'  in  allusion  to  the  broad  Scottish  accent  of 
the  philosopher. 

The  fantastic  attire  of  Rousseau  may  have  suggested 
to  Bozzy  the  Corsican  dress  in  his  valise,  or  he  may 
have  construed  into  a  command,  willingly  enough,  the 
hint  Paoli  had  dropped  to  let  them  know  at  home  how 
affairs  were  going.  He  waited  on  Chatham  with  it,  and 
was  received  pompously  but  graciously,  says  the  Earl  of 
Buchan  who  was  present,  for  a  touch  of  melodrama 
was  not  uncongenial  to  the  great  minister,  the  '  Pericles 
of  Great  Britain,'  as  the  general  had  styled  him.  Bozzy 
thanked  him  c  for  the  very  genteel  manner  in  which 
you  are  pleased  to  treat  me.'  In  return,  Chatham 
eulogized  Paoli  as  one  of  Plutarch's  men,  as  Cardinal 
de  Retz  had  said  of  Montrose. 


JAMES  BOSWELL  51 

He  saw  Auchinleck  in  somewhat  altered  circum- 
stances from  those  in  which,  four  years  before,  he  had 
left  his  father's  house,  riding  through  Glasgow  'in  a 
cocked  hat,  a  brown  wig,  brown  coat  made  in  the 
court  fashion,  red  vest,  corduroy  small  clothes,  and 
long  military-looking  boots,  with  his  servant  riding  a 
most  aristocratic  distance  behind.'  He  had  left  it 
likely  to  vex  the  soul  of  his  father,  the  laureate  of 
doggerel,  threatening  to  be  the  disgrace  of  the  family ; 
he  returned  as  the  acquaintance,  in  varying  degrees  of 
intimacy,  of  Johnson,  Wilkes,  Churchill,  Goldsmith,  the 
Earl  Marischal,  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  Paoli,  Chatham,  and 
plenipotentiaries  of  all  kinds.  A  wonderful  list  for  the 
raw  youth  they  had  known  at  home;  yet  nowhere  in 
all  his  intercourse  does  he  show  the  least  want  of  self- 
possession  or  easy  bearing.  The  c  facility  of  manners ' 
and  his  good  humour  had  carried  him  all  through  his 
curious  experiences  with  German  courts  and  Italian 
peasants.  A  '  spirited  tour/  truly,  if  perhaps  the 
moral  results  had  been  greater.  The  nobility  and 
gentry  of  this  country  were  welcomed  abroad  with  but 
too  great  avidity.  Italy,  the  garden  of  Europe,  Bozzy 
declared  to  be  the  Covent  Garden,  and  isolated  passages 
in  his  book  shew  that  he  could  not  claim,  like  Milton, 
to  have  borne  himself  truly  '  in  all  these  places  where 
so  many  things  are  considered  lawful/  Fox,  we  know, 
did  not  escape  the  contagion  of  the  grand  tour,  and 
Boswell  had  been  '  caught  young.' 

Nor  will  the  reader  find  much  fault  in  what  the  adverse 
critics  have  unduly  emphasized — his  interviewing  or 
forcing  himself  upon  men.  A  man,  as  Johnson  said  to 
him  when  seeking  an  interlocutor  on  this  point,  always 
makes  himself  greater  as  he  increases  his  knowledge. 
When  he  was  at  Dunvegan  on  his  northern  tour,  and 
Colonel  Macleod  seemed  to  hint  at  this,  Bozzy  offers  as 


52  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

his  defence  of  what  f  has  procured  me  much  happiness ' 
the  eagerness  he  ever  felt  to  share  the  society  of  men 
distinguished  by  their  rank  or  talents.  If  a  man,  he 
adds,  is  praised  for  seeking  knowledge,  though  mountains 
and  seas  are  in  his  way,  he  may  be  pardoned  in  the  pur- 
suit of  the  same  object  under  difficulties  as  great  though 
of  a  different  kind.  And  the  defence  will  not  be  refused 
him  for  the  use  he  has  made  of  the  means.  Wisdom 
and  literature  alike  are  justified  of  their  children,  and  the 
masters  in  either  are  not  so  numerous  that  we  can  afford 
to  quarrel  with  them,  or  wrangle  over  their  respective 
merits.  'Sensation/  said  Johnson,  'is  sensation/  and 
the  pretty  general  feeling  now  is  that  in  his  department 
Boswell  is  a  master. 

From  his  first  setting  out,  he  had  written  down  every 
night  what  he  had  noted  during  the  day,  '  throwing 
together  that  I  might  afterwards  make  a  selection  at 
leisure.'  He  was  to  try  his  'prentice  hand  on  his  Tour 
in  Corsica  before  shewing  his  strength  in  his  two  greater 
works.  Mrs  Barbauld  regarded  him  as  no  ordinary 
traveller,  with 

'  Working  thoughts  which  swelled  the  breast 
Of  generous  Boswell,  when  with  noble  aim 
And  views  beyond  the  narrow  beaten  track 
By  trivial  fancy  trod,  he  turned  his  course 
From  polished  Gallia's  soft  delicious  vales.' 

Such  thoughts  were  perhaps  really  foreign  to  that 
traveller,  yet  Dr  Hill  assures  us  that  by  every  Corsican 
of  education  the  name  of  Boswell  is  known  and  honoured. 
One  curious  circumstance  is  given.  At  Pino,  when  Bos- 
well fancying  himself  '  in  a  publick  house '  or  inn,  had 
called  for  things,  the  hostess  had  said  una  cosa  dopo 
un  altra,)  signore^  'one  thing  after  another,  sir.'  This 
has  lingered  as  a  memento  of  Bozzy  in  Corsica,  and  has 


JAMES  BOS  WELL  53 

been  found  by  Dr  Hill  to  be  preserved  among  the 
traditions  in  the  Tomasi  family.  Translations  of  the 
book  in  Italian,  Dutch,  French,  and  German,  spread 
abroad  the  name  of  the  traveller  who,  if  like  a  prophet 
without  honour  in  his  own  country,  has  not  been  without 
it  elsewhere. 


CHAPTER  III 

EDINBURGH  BAR — STRATFORD  JUBILEE.       1766-69 

'  A  clerk,  foredoomed  his  father's  soul  to  cross, 
Who  pens  a  stanza,  when  he  should  engross.' — POPE. 

THE  return  of  the  prodigal  to  Auchinleck  would  seem 
at  first  to  have  been  attended  with  some  satisfaction  to 
both  father  and  son.  The  father  might  now  believe 
that  he  was  entitled  to  consideration  from  the  son, 
as  a  reward  for  his  long-continued  indulgence  to  the 
traveller,  who  might  in  his  turn  reflect  on  the  advan- 
tages which  he  derived  from  such  a  protracted  tour. 
Accordingly,  in  his  papers  of  the  April  of  this  year,  we 
find  the  following  entry : — '  My  father  said  to  me,  "  I 
am  much  pleased  with  your  conduct  in  every  respect." 
After  all  my  anxiety  while  abroad,  here  is  the  most 
perfect  approbation  and  calm  of  mind.  I  never  felt 
such  sollid  (sic)  happiness.'  But  the  philosopher,  who 
with  Paoli  had  compared  his  mind  to  a  camera  obscura, 
reappears  unfortunately  in  the  next  entry.  '  But  I  find 
I  am  not  so  happy  with  this  approbation  and  this  calm 
as  I  expected  to  be.  But  why  do  I  say  alas !  when  I 
really  look  upon  this  life  merely  as  a  transient  state  ? ' 
To  this  curious  expression  of  Bos  well  we  shall  refer 
when  we  discuss  at  the  close  his  religious  and  philo- 
sophical views,  but  it  is  distressing  to  find  such  whim- 
sicalities colouring  his  sense  of  the  old  man's  kindness 

54 


JAMES  BOSWELL  55 

when  he  writes  but  shortly  after,  *  I  must  stay  at 
Auchinleck,  I  have  there  just  the  kind  of  complaining 
proper  for  me.  All  must  complain,  and  I  more  than 
most  of  my  fellow-creatures.' 

On  the  26th  July  1766  he  passed  advocate  at  the 
bar.  On  putting  on  his  gown  he  remarked  to  his 
brother-advocates,  as  he  says,  that  his  natural  propen- 
sities had  led  him  to  a  military  life,  but  now  that  he 
had  been  pressed  by  his  father  into  the  service  he  did 
not  doubt  but  that  he  should  shew  as  good  results  as 
those  who  had  joined  as  volunteers.  His  gay  friend 
Wilkes  had  declared  that  he  would  be  out-distanced  in 
the  professional  race  by  dull  plodders  and  blockheads, 
but  at  the  outset  he  appears  to  have  started  with  a  fair 
amount  of  zest.  He  dedicated  his  inaugural  thesis  to  the 
son  of  the  Earl  of  Bute,  Lord  Mountstuart,  with  whom 
he  had  travelled  in  Italy,  and  on  whom  he  flattered 
himself  he  had  made  some  impression,  the  first  of 
BoswelPs  many  ineffectual  attempts  to  secure  place  and 
promotion,  for  on  a  seat  in  Parliament  he  had  four 
years  before  set  his  heart.  A  copy  of  the  thesis  was 
sent  to  Johnson,  who  by  this  time  had  rather  cooled 
over  the  proposed  publication  by  his  friend  of  a  book 
on  Corsica.  'You  have  no  materials/  he  said,  *  which 
others  have  not  or  may  not  have.  You  have  warmed 
your  imagination.  I  wish  there  were  some  cure  like 
the  lover's  leap  for  all  heads  of  which  some  single  idea 
has  obtained  an  unreasonable  and  irregular  possession. 
Mind  your  own  affairs  and  leave  the  Corsicans  to 
theirs.'  Touching  on  the  faulty  Latinity  of  the  essay, 
'Ruddiman,'  added  the  old  man,  'is  dead.'  On 
entering  his  new  career  Bozzy  began  by  vows  for  his 
good  conduct.  These,  a  remnant  of  his  old  Catholic 
days,  we  shall  find  him  renewing  again  and  again, 
ludicrously  and  pathetically  enough,  however,  as  we 


56  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

draw  to  the  close.  Sometimes  they  appear  with  refer- 
ence to  matters  with  which  the  knowledge  of  the 
unpublished  parts  of  the  letters  to  Temple,  now  in  the 
possession  of  an  American  collector,  has  to  deal  without 
suggesting  unduly  to  the  more  fastidious  sense  of  the 
present  day  the  vagaries  and  weaknesses  of  their  writer. 
Johnson  protested  against  this  attempt  to  '  enchain  his 
volatility '  by  vows.  But  Boswell  replies  that  they  may 
be  useful  to  one  c  of  a  variable  judgment  and  irregular 
inclinations.  For  my  part,  without  affecting  to  be  a 
Socrates,  I  am  sure  I  have  a  more  than  ordinary 
struggle  to  maintain  with  the  Evil  Principle,  and  all 
the  methods  I  can  devise  are  little  enough  to  keep  me 
tolerably  steady  in  the  paths  of  rectitude/  Could  the 
doctor  have  read  even  the  published  correspondence 
he  would  have  been  at  no  loss  for  a  detailed  com- 
mentary on  this  defence. 

And  coming  events  now  cast  their  shadow  before, 
That  curious  feature  of  BoswelPs  character,  the  mixture 
of  religious  sentiments  and  the  Sterne  vein  of  pietistic 
moralizing  united  with  laxity  in  practice,  appears 
strangely  enough  in  the  letter  to  Temple,  dated  in  the 
February  of  1767,  and  sent  to  his  friend  who  had  just 
been  ordained  to  the  living  of  Mamhead  in  Devon. 
'  I  view/  he  writes,  *  the  profession  of  a  clergyman  in 
an  amiable  and  respectable  light.  Don't  be  moved  by 
declamations  against  ecclesiastical  history,  as  if  that 
could  blacken  the  sacred  order. '  He  admits  that 
ecclesiastical  history  is  not  the  best  field  for  the  display 
of  the  virtues  in  that  profession,  but  we  are  to  judge 
of  the  thousands  of  worthy  divines  who  have  been  a 
blessing  to  their  parishes.  He  exhorts  his  friend  to 
labour  cheerfully  in  the  vineyard  and  to  leave  not  a  tare 
in  Mamhead.  In  Edinburgh  it  appears  there  were 
specimens;  for  after  this  pious  homily  he  confesses 


JAMES  BOSWELL  57 

quietly  his  own  liaison  with  'a  dear  infidel1  of  a 
married  woman.  But  the  love  affairs  of  Boswell,  one  of 
the  most  curious  and  *  characteristica!'  (as  he  would 
himself  have  phrased  it)  episodes  in  his  life  we  shall 
discuss  in  a  connected  form  in  the  next  chapter,  in 
order  to  secure  clearness  of  treatment  and  concentration 
of  detail. 

We  turn,  then,  to  his  career  at  the  bar.  There  can 
be  no  shadow  of  a  doubt  that  with  proper  industry, 
backed  as  he  was  with  very  strong  social  and  family 
connections,  he  would  have  secured  a  lucrative  pro- 
fessional practice.  In  February  of  1767  he  is  'coming 
into  great  employment ;  I  have  this  winter  made  sixty- 
five  guineas,  which  is  a  considerable  sum  for  a  young 
man/  and  the  Boswelliana  shew  him  in  easy  intercourse 
with  the  best  society  in  the  Scottish  capital.  Belong- 
ing as  he  did  to  the  hereditary  noblesse  de  la  robe,  as 
Lockhart  calls  it,  he  was  not  likely,  with  but  moderate 
attention,  to  have  stood  like  Scott,  'an  hour  by  the 
Tron,  wi'  deil  ane  to  speir  his  price/ — Sir  Walter's 
fee  book  shews  for  the  first  year  a  return  of  ^24,  33., 
and  ;£57,  155.  for  the  second.  As  he  had  years  before 
vowed  to  Lord  Hailes  that  he  would  transcribe  Erskine's 
Institutes  several  times  over  till  he  had  imprinted  it  on 
his  memory,  so  now  he  was  hopeful  by  binding  up  the 
session  papers  of  securing  a  treasure  of  law  reasoning 
and  a  collection  of  extraordinary  facts.  By  March  he 
had  cleared  eighty  guineas,  and  was  'Surprised  at  my- 
self, I  speak  with  so  much  ease  and  boldness,  and  have 
already  the  language  of  the  bar  so  much  at  command. 
I  am  doing  nobly.  I  can  hardly  ever  answer  the  letters 
of  my  friends.'  He  had  quarrelled  with  Rousseau  who 
had  likewise  broken  with  Hume,  whose  appointment 
as  secretary  to  Conway  had  perhaps  cured  him  of  his 
follies  over  the  wild  philosopher.  We  find  Boswell  also 


58  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

designing  squibs  which  were  in  the  London  printshops, 
writing  verses  for  them  and  ridiculing  'The  Savage'  of 
his  former  idolatry. 

Paoli  had  sent  him  a  long  letter  of  sixteen  pages. 
Chatham  in  his  retirement  at  Bath,  mystifying  the  court 
and  his  colleagues,  could  yet  find  time  to'  send  him 
a  three-paged  communication.  In  reply,  the  young 
traveller  assures  him  that  the  character  of  the  great 
minister  had  *  filled  many  of  my  best  hours  with  the 
noble  admiration  which  a  disinterested  soul  can  enjoy 
in  the  bower  of  philosophy.'  He  informs  his  lordship 
that  he  is  preparing  for  publication  his  Tour  in  Corsica, 
that  he  has  entered  at  the  bar,  and  '  I  begin  to  like  it. 
I  labour  hard ;  and  feel  myself  coming  forward,  and  I 
hope  to  be  useful  to  my  country.  Could  your  Lordship 
find  time  to  honour  me  now  and  then  with  a  letter  ?  I 
have  been  told  how  favourably  your  Lordship  has  spoken 
of  me.  To  correspond  with  a  Paoli  and  a  Chatham  is 
enough  to  keep  a  young  man  ever  ardent  in  the  pursuit 
of  a  virtuous  fame/  In  June  he  expected  to  be  busier 
than  ever,  during  the  week  when  his  father  sat  as 
Judge  of  the  Outer  House,  '  for  you  must  know  that 
the  absurdity  of  mankind  makes  nineteen  out  of  twenty 
employ  the  son  of  the  judge  before  whom  their  case  is 
heard/  an  admission  which  only  increases  our  regret 
at  the  want  of  professional  industry  on  the  part  of  the 
son.  His  addiction  to  the  society  of  players  only  in- 
creased the  more  as  his  practice  at  the  bar  would  have 
been  thought  to  engross  his  attention.  For  the  opening 
of  the  Canongate  Theatre,  on  gth  December  1767,  he 
had  been  induced  to  write  a  prologue  to  the  play  of 
The  Earl  of  Essex  with  which  the  newly  licensed 
house  started  its  career.  Part  of  the  opening  verses, 
as  spoken  by  Ross,  'a  very  good  copy,  very  concilia- 


JAMES  BOSWELL  59 

tory'  as  the  Earl  of  Mansfield  styled  them,  runs  as 
follows : — 

1  This  night,  lov'd  Georges  free  enlightened  age 
Bids  Royal  favour  shield  the  Scottish  stage ; 
His  Royal  Favour  every  bosom  cheers  ; 
The  drama  now  with  dignity  appears  I 
Hard  is  my  fate  if  murmurings  there  be 
Because  that  favour  is  announced  by  me. 
Anxious,  alarm'd,  and  aw'd  by  every  frown, 
May  I  entreat  the  candour  of  the  Town  ? 
You  see  me  here  by  no  unworthy  art ; 
My  all  I  venture  where  I've  fix'd  my  heart. 
Fondly  ambitious  of  an  honest  fame, 
My  humble  labours  your  indulgence  claim. 
I  wish  to  hold  no  Right  but  by  your  choice, 
I'll  trust  my  patent  to  the  Publick  Voice.' 

The  effect  of  this,  aided  by  friends  properly  planted  in 
different  parts  of  the  theatre,  Boswell  assures  us  was 
instantaneous  and  effectual.  But  the  plaudits  given 
would  have  been  better  in  a  strictly  professional  court, 
and  it  led,  we  can  see,  to  the  association  of  Boswell 
with  but  questionable  society.  'The  joyous  crew  of 
thunderers  in  the  galleries/  as  Robert  Fergusson  de- 
scribes them,  the  vulgar  cits  applying  to  their  parched 
lips  'thirst  quenching  porter/  and  the  notoriously 
irregular  lives  of  the  players,  all  these  were  ties  and 
associations  ill  calculated  to  appease  the  just  indigna- 
tion of  his  father  or  to  add  to  forensic  reputation  in 
Edinburgh.  The  Scottish  Themis,  says  Scott,  speaking 
from  his  own  early  experience  of  much  higher  literary 
pursuits,  is  peculiarly  jealous  of  any  flirtation  with  the 
muses  on  the  part  of  those  who  have  ranged  themselves 
under  her  banners,  and  to  them  the  least  lingering  look 
behind  is  fatal.  Little  wonder,  then,  that  the  paternal 
anger  was  again  roused,  when  '  the  look  behind '  on  his 


60  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

part  was  coupled  with  the  bitter  remembrances  of  the 
laureate  of  the  Soapers,  of  the  Erskine  Correspondence, 
and  his  own  long  indulgence  destined  at  last  to  bear 
such  sorry  fruits. 

*  How  unaccountable  it  is/  he  cries  impatiently  to 
Temple,  'that  my  father  and  I  should  be  so  ill  to- 
gether !  He  is  a  man  of  sense  and  a  man  of  worth ; 
but  from  some  unhappy  turn  in  his  disposition  he  is 
much  dissatisfied  with  a  son  you  know.  ...  To  give 
you  an  instance.  I  send  you  a  letter  I  had  a  few 
days  ago.  I  have  answered  in  my  own  style;  I  will 
be  myself!  How  galling  it  is  to  the  friend  of  Paoli 
to  be  treated  so  ! '  He  confesses  his  father  has  '  that 
Scots  strength  of  sarcasm  which  is  peculiar  to  a  North 
Briton/  and  that  time  was  when  it  would  have  de- 
pressed him.  But  now  he  is  firm,  and,  '  as  my  revered 
friend  Mr  Samuel  Johnson  used  to  say/  he  feels  the 
privileges  of  an  independent  human  being  !  To  add  to 
the  confusion  of  Lord  Auchinleck  his  son  had  flung 
himself  with  all  his  enthusiasm  into  the  famous  Douglas 
Trial,  the  cause  that  figures  so  much  to  the  confusion, 
it  is  to  be  feared,  of  the  general  reader.  Of  this 
some  full  account  is  necessary  in  order  to  explain 
that  extraordinary  trial, — perhaps  the  most  protracted 
and  famous  that  ever  came  before  a  court, — which, 
dragging  its  slow  length  along  through  a  longer  course 
than  the  Peloponnesian  War,  fills  the  shelves  of  legal 
libraries  with  eighteen  portly  volumes  of  papers  and 
reports.  In  the  case  Boswell  really  held  no  actual 
brief,  though  were  we  to  follow  the  impression  he  gives 
of  his  services  we  should  infer  he  had  been  leading 
counsel  for  the  plaintiff,  Douglas.  '  With  a  labour  of 
which  few  are  capable/  says  Bozzy,  many  years  after, 
'  he  compressed  the  substance  of  the  immense  volumes 
of  proofs  and  arguments  into  an  octavo  pamphlet/  to 


JAMES  BOSVVELL  61 

which  its  author  believed  '  we  may  ascribe  a  great  share 
of  the  popularity  on  Mr  Douglas's  side.'  Then  he 
adds  in  a  characteristic  sentence,  the  meaning  of  which 
can  be  fully  appreciated  only  by  those  who  have 
followed  his  contributions  to  magazines  and  the  press 
of  the  day,  '  Mr  Boswell  took  care  to  keep  the  news- 
papers and  other  publications  incessantly  warm  with 
various  writings,  both  in  prose  and  in  verse,  all  tending 
to  touch  the  heart  and  rouse  the  parental  and  sym- 
pathetic feelings.' 

Lady  Jane  Douglas,  sister  to  Archibald,  Duke  of 
Douglas,  had  been  privately  married  in  1746  to  Colonel 
Steuart,  afterwards  Sir  John  Steuart  of  Grandtully.  She 
was  then  in  the  forty-ninth  year  of  her  age,  and  the 
marriage  was  not  divulged  till  May  1748  to  her  brother 
who  had  not  been  reconciled  and  had  in  consequence 
suspended  her  allowance.  At  Paris,  in  very  humble 
lodgings,  she  gave  birth  to  male  twins  in  the  house  of  a 
Madame  le  Brun.  The  parents  in  1749  returned  to 
Scotland  where  one  of  the  children  died;  in  1761  the 
Duke  of  Douglas  had  himself  followed.  Three  claimants 
took  the  field,  the  Duke  of  Hamilton  as  heir  male  of 
line,  the  Earl  of  Selkirk  as  heir  of  provision  under 
former  deeds,  and  Archibald  Steuart  or  Douglas.  Lady 
Jane  died  in  1753,  and  Sir  John  in  1764,  both  on  their 
death-beds  testifying  to  the  legitimacy  of  their  surviving 
child.  The  Duke  of  Douglas,  long  prejudiced  against 
this  son's  claim  by  the  machinations  of  the  Hamiltons, 
had  revoked  the  deed  in  their  favour  for  a  settlement 
executed  in  behalf  of  his  sister's  son  Archibald.  But 
stories  had  become  rife  of  that  son  being  the  child  of 
a  Nicholas  Mignon  and  Marie  Guerin  from  whom  he 
had  been  purchased,  and  an  action  to  reduce  service  on 
a  plea  of  partus  suppositio  was  instituted  by  the  tutors 
of  the  Duke  of  Hamilton  who  was  then  a  minor. 


62  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

In  France  negociations  were  conducted,  investigations 
made,  and  witnesses  examined  by  Burnet  of  Monboddo, 
Gardenstone,  Hailes,  and  Eskgrove,  and  at  last  in  July 
1767  the  Court  of  Session  issued  its  decision.  Lord 
Dundas,  the  President,  speaking  first,  and  dwelling  on 
the  age  of  Lady  Jane,  childless  by  a  former  marriage, 
the  secrecy  of  the  birth,  and  the  intrinsic  valuelessness 
of  death-bed  depositions  when  set  against  pecuniary 
interests  and  family  pride,  recorded  his  vote  in  favour 
of  the  Hamiltons.  Six  days  were  subsequently  taken 
up  with  the  speeches  of  the  other  judges,  and  Mon- 
boddo, speaking  last,  voted  for  Douglas.  The  verdict 
was  seven  on  each  side,  and  by  the  President's  vote  the 
case  in  Scotland  was  won  by  the  pursuers.  Kames, 
Monboddo,  and  Lord  Auchinleck,  were  in  favour  of  the 
defender,  Douglas. 

The  case  was  at  once  by  him  appealed  to  the  House 
of  Lords.  Douglas  was  favoured  in  Scotland,  where  for 
years  the  state  of  interest  had  been  such  that  people  in 
company  used  to  bargain,  for  the  maintenance  of  peace, 
that  no  mention  of  this  disturbing  plea  should  be  in- 
troduced. So  high  did  the  feeling  run  in  Edinburgh 
that  the  Hamilton  party  had  been  driven  from  their 
apartments  in  Holyrood  Palace  and  their  property 
plundered.  It  was  fortunate  that  this  loophole  of 
escape  to  another  court  was  opened,  for  before  the 
Union  such  a  cause  would  have  led  almost  to  civil 
broil  where  the  rival  interests  of  the  factions,  through 
the  ramifications  of  marriage  and  other  connections, 
extended  so  widely.  In  earlier  days  the  strife  would 
have  ended  by  an  appeal  to  the  sword  on  the  cause- 
way. All  the  court  influence  of  the  Hamiltons  had  been 
bent,  and  bent  in  vain,  to  secure  the  exclusion  from  the 
bench  of  Lord  Monboddo,  counsel  for  Douglas,  and 
a  duel  had  been  fought  between  their  agent  Andrew 


JAMES  BOSWELL  63 

Stuart  and  Thurlow  the  opposing  advocate.  The  excite- 
ment over  the  verdict  of  the  Lords  on  Monday,  February 
27,  1769,  was  unprecedented.  In  the  Autobiography 
<?/"  Jupiter  Carlyle  is  fortunately  preserved  the  account 
of  the  scene,  witnessed  by  the  doctor  himself,  who  had 
been  successful  in  gaining  admission  to  the  court,  where 
from  nine  in  the  morning  till  ten  at  night  he  remained, 
hemmed  in  by  the  crowd  and  overcome  with  the  oppres- 
sive heat.  Mansfield  spoke  over  one  hour,  and,  on  his 
appearing  to  faint,  the  Chancellor  rushed  out  for  a 
bottle  and  glasses,  the  current  of  fresh  air  being  felt  by 
the  crowd  as  a  relief.  Finally  the  verdict  of  the 
Scottish  courts  was  reversed  without  a  division,  and 
a  verdict  found  in  favour  of  Douglas.  Hume  was  not 
satisfied  of  the  legitimacy  of  the  pursuer,  neither  was 
Lord  Shelburne,  and  bribery  on  both  sides  had 
been  extensively  employed,  over  ^100,000  having 
been  calculated  to  have  been  spent  in  this  protracted 
litigation. 

It  was  on  the  evening  of  Thursday,  shortly  after 
eight,  that  the  tidings  reached  Edinburgh  by  express. 
The  city  was  at  once  illuminated,  and  next  morning 
Dundas  on  his  way  to  the  Parliament  House  was 
threatened  by  a  mob  such  as  the  town  had  not  seen 
since  the  Porteous  Riot.  Two  troops  of  dragoons 
were  drafted  at  once  on  the  same  day  into  the  capital. 
As  usually  told,  the  story,  which  is  vouched  for  by 
Ramsay  of  Ochtertyre,  is  that  the  mob  of  the  night 
before  had  been  headed  by  the  excited  Bos  well,  and 
that  the  windows  of  his  father's  house  were  smashed. 
Had  such  been  the  case,  it  must  have  been  by  an  over- 
sight on  the  part  of  the  mob,  or  some  petulant  freak  of 
the  son,  for  on  this  occasion  both  Boswell  and  his 
father  had  for  once  been  unanimous  in  their  belief  in 
the  legitimacy  of  Douglas.  But  there  is  no  need  for 


64  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

doubting  Ramsay's  assertion  that  Lord  Auchinleck  had, 
with  tears  in  his  eyes,  to  implore  President  Dundas  to 
commit  his  son  to  the  Tolbooth  !  Not  only  had  Bozzy 
taken  the  field  in  the  November  of  1767  with  his 
Essence  of  the  Douglas  Cause,  '  which  I  regretted  that 
Dr  Johnson  never  took  the  trouble  to  study/  even 
though  *  the  question  interested  nations/  and  the 
pamphlet  had  produced,  as  its  writer  flattered  himself, 
considerable  effect  in  deciding  the  case,  but  he  had  ven- 
tured on  a  breach  of  professional  etiquette  in  publishing 
Dorando,  a  Spanish  Tale.  This  brochure  was  ordered 
by  the  Court  of  Session  to  be  suppressed  as  contempt 
of  court,  after  it  had  run  through  three  editions.  No 
copy  of  this  forlorn  hope  of  the  book  hunter  has  ever 
been  found,  though  doubtless  it  lurks  in  some  library 
where  its  want  of  the  writer's  name  upon  the  title 
page  may  have  kept  it  from  making  its  reappearance. 
Though  it  bore  no  name,  yet  Boswell,  when  writing  to 
Temple  over  it,  speaks  of  *  My  publisher  Wilkie/  and 
he  seems  to  have  been  afraid  that  the  copy  sent  by  him 
should  fall  into  the  hands  of  strangers.  In  the  Gentle- 
man's  Magazine  for  July  1767,  however,  it  is  reviewed, 
but  the  value  of  the  shilling  booklet  does  not  seem  to 
have  impressed  the  critic.  '  The  Spanish  Tale,1  he 
says,  '  supposes  the  contests  to  be  finally  determined  in 
favour  of  Don  Ferdinand  against  the  family  of  Ardivoso 
— but  the  real  question  is  still  in  dispute,  having  been 
removed  by  appeal  to  the  House  of  Lords.  The 
pamphlet  is  zealously  but  feebly  written :  the  author 
in  some  places  affects  the  sublime,  and  in  some  the 
pathetic ;  but  these  are  the  least  tolerable  parts  of  his 
performance/  Thus  airily  does  the  reviewer  dismiss 
Bozzy's  determined  effort  to  rouse,  as  he  imagined,  the 
parental  and  sympathetical  feelings,  and  it  is  clear  at 
least  that,  however  much  its  recovery  would  add  to  the 


JAMES  BOSWELL  65 

stock  of  harmless  pleasure  among  professed  Boswellians 
and  collectors,  its  loss  cannot  be  said  to  have  '  eclipsed 
the  gaiety  of  nations.' 

During  the  course  of  the  trial  the  Tour  in  Corsica 
had  been  preparing.  Early  in  1768  it  was  issued  from 
the  celebrated  press  of  Robert  and  Andrew  Foulis  in 
Glasgow,  and  the  publishers  were  the  Dillys  in  the 
Poultry,  London,  who  were  to  act  for  him  in  all  his 
literary  undertakings  to  the  end  of  his  life.  It  was  a 
lull  in  the  storm  of  the  Douglas  crisis,  and  the  old 
judge,  eager  enough  to  see  his  son  associated  with 
anything  rational,  was  not  unpleased  with  its  appearing 
as  a  pledge  of  better  things.  '  Jamie/  he  admitted, 
'  had  taen  a  toot  on  a  new  horn.'  The  account  of 
Corsica  which  had  been  made  up  from  various  sources 
of  information  ran  to  two  hundred  and  thirty-nine 
pages  ;  but  the  real  interest  of  the  volume  attaches  to 
the  Journal  which  occupies  a  hundred  and  twenty.  The 
translations  from  Seneca  were  done  by  Thomas  Day,  then 
very  young,  the  author  of  Sandford  and  Merton,  and  the 
creator  of  that  constellation  of  excellence,  Mr  Barlow, 
whose  connection  in  any  degree  with  Boswell  is  almost 
provocative  of  a  smile.  The  peculiar  orthography  of 
the  writer  is  defended  in  the  preface,  for  he  allows 
himself  not  only  such  divergencies  as  '  tremenduous/ 

*  authour,'    '  ambassadour,'  but    also   '  authentick '   and 

*  panegyrick.'     The  dedication  of  the  first  edition  to 
Paoli  was  dated  on  his  own  birthday,  and  the  book  ran 
to  a  third  edition  before  the  October  of  the  same  year. 
As  purchased  by  the  Dillys  for  a  hundred  guineas  it 
would  appear  to  have  been  a  profitable   speculation, 
and  the  wide  circulation  to  which  it  attained  we  shall 
see  was  not  merely  due  to  accident  but  to  more  solid 
qualities.      *  Pray  read/  says    Horace  Walpole   to   his 
friend  Gray,  *  the  new  account  of  Corsica.     The  author 


66  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

is  a  strange  being,  and  has  a  rage  of  knowing  everybody 
that  ever  was  talked  of.  He  forced  himself  upon  me  at 
Paris  in  spite  of  my  teeth  and  my  doors.'  'Mr  B.'s 
book/  replies  Gray — with  a  curious  anticipation  of  the 
Carlylean  canon  of  criticism — '  has  pleased  and  moved 
me  strangely ;  all  I  mean  that  relates  to  Paoli.  The 
pamphlet  proves,  what  I  have  always  maintained,  that 
any  fool  may  write  a  most  valuable  book  by  chance,  if 
he  will  only  tell  us  what  he  heard  and  saw  with  veracity. 
Of  Mr  B.'s  book  I  have  not  the  least  suspicion,  because 
I  am  sure  he  could  invent  nothing  of  the  kind. 
The  title  of  this  part  of  his  work  is  a  dialogue  between 
a  Green  Goose  and  a  Hero.;  But  Gray  was  fastidious, 
in  this  case  blindly  so.  The  merits  of  Goldsmith  he 
could  when  dying  perceive,  but  the  rollicking  humour 
of  Bozzy  in  this  his  first  book  was  sealed  to  the  re 
cluse  critic  who  '  never  spoke  out/  a  thing  that  never 
could  be  safely  asserted  of  the  author  of  the  Tour  in 
Corsica. 

That  'authour,'  however,  was  now  bent  on  ex- 
tracting the  sanction  of  approval  from  his  idol.  He 
hastened  to  London,  heralding  his  arrival,  as  was  his 
wont,  by  a  deftly  contributed  paragraph  to  the  papers. 
The  society  journals  of  to-day  have  not  improved  on 
Boswell  in  their  method  of  obtaining  first  hand  informa- 
tion ;  he  was  a  most  assiduous  chronicler  of  his  own 
actions,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  there  is  much 
Boswell  'copy'  buried  in  the  pages  of  the  papers  of 
the  time.  From  the  Public  Advertizer  of  February  28th 
we  learn  'James  Boswell,  Esq.,  is  expected  in  town,' 
and,  on  March  24th,  'yesterday  James  Boswell,  Esq., 
arrived  from  Scotland  at  his  lodgings  in  Half  Moon 
Street,  Piccadilly.'  He  had  received  no  letter  from 
Johnson  since  the  one  in  which  the  Latinity  of  his 
thesis  had  been  criticised,  and  Boswell  had  heard  that 


JAMES  BOSWELL  67 

the  publication  in  his  book  of  a  letter  from  his  friend 
had  given  offence  to  its  writer.  Johnson  was  in  Oxford 
at  the  time,  and  thither  flew  Bozzy  to  obtain  the  ap- 
proval of  his  labours  and,  with  an  eye  to  all  future 
contingencies,  his  sanction  for  the  publication  in  his 
biography  of  all  Johnson's  letters  to  him.  'When  I 
am  dead,  sir,'  was  the  reply,  '  you  may  do  as  you  will.' 

'  My  book/  he  writes  eagerly  to  Temple,  '  has 
amazing  celebrity.  Lord  Lyttelton,  Mr  Walpole,  Mrs 
Macaulay,  and  Mr  Garrick,  have  all  written  me  noble 
letters  about  it.  There  are  two  Dutch  translations 
going  forward.'  General  Oglethorpe,  an  old  veteran 
who  had  seen  service  under  Prince  Eugene,  and  the 
friend  of  Pope  whose  verses  upon  him  '  I  had  read 
from  my  early  years,'  called  upon  him  and  solicited 
his  acquaintance.  He  became  a  sort  of  literary  lion. 
*  I  am  really  the  great  man  now/  he  cries ;  *  I  have 
David  Hume  in  the  forenoon,  Mr  Johnson  in  the  after- 
noon of  the  same  day.  I  give  admirable  dinners  and 
good  claret,  and  the  moment  I  go  abroad  again,  which 
will  be  in  a  day  or  two,  I  set  up  my  chariot.  This  is 
enjoying  the  fruit  of  my  labours,  and  appearing  like  the 
friend  of  Paoli.'  Alas  for  that  friend  ! — he  confesses 
to  his  correspondent  that  he  has  been  'wild.'  The 
form  of  this  outbreak  may  be  sufficiently  seen  by  the 
general  reader  in  the  leading  questions  which  at  this 
time  Boswell  is  found  putting  to  Johnson ;  for  the  Life 
of  Johnson,  as  we  shall  indicate  in  its  proper  place,  is 
no  less  the  life  of  the  biographer,  whose  mind  was  ever 
seeking  to  shelter  itself  under  the  guidance  of  a  stronger 
force,  and  to  effect  a  moral  anchorage  or  moorings 
behind  the  lee  of  his  great  friend.  When  Bozzy  indulges 
in  '  the  luxury  of  noble  sentiments,'  he  is  often  known 
to  be  courting  an  indemnity  to  his  conscience  for  lax 
practice.  Longfellow  makes  Miles  Standish  in  his 


68  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

belligerent  mood  turn  in  the  Caesar  to  where  the  thumb- 
marks  in  the  margin  proclaimed  that  the  battle  was 
hottest ;  Bos  well  often  indicates  the  decline  and  fall  of 
the  moralist  by  an  apparently  undue  vein  of  pietistic 
comments. 

The  next  year  was  to  witness  the  friend  of  Paoli  in 
his  most  eccentric  display — the  Shakesperian  Festival 
inaugurated  by  Garrick  at  Stratford.  By  this  ludicrous 
gathering  it  is  that  Boswell  is  known  to  the  mass  of 
readers  who  have  never  cared  to  know  more  of  '  Corsica 
Bosweir  than  what  they  can  gather  from  the  lively 
picture  of  Macaulay.  There  he  is  known  only  as  it  were 
in  the  gross,  to  which  indeed,  as  Johnson  said  of  Milton, 
the  undramatic  nature  of  the  essayist's  mind  was  rather 
prone,  careless  as  it  was  or  incapable  of  the  finer  shades 
of  character.  Yet,  as  we  know,  he  was  not  the  solitary 
masker  or  mummer  in  this  extraordinary  carnival,  which 
seems  not  creditable  to  the  taste  of  its  promoters,  and 
resembles  rather  the  entry  of  a  travelling  circus  into  a 
provincial  town  than  a  serious  commemoration  of  a  great 
man.  However,  c  thither  Mr  Boswell  repaired  with  all 
the  enthusiasm  of  a  poetical  mind;'  as  he  informs  us, 
'  such  an  opportunity  for  the  warbling  of  his  Muse  was 
not  neglected.'  On  Wednesday,  Sept.  6th,  about  five  in 
the  morning,  says  The  Scots  Magazine  for  that  month  in 
its  leading  article,  the  performers  from  Drury  Lane 
paraded  the  streets  of  Stratford,  and  serenaded  the  ladies 
with  a  ballad  by  Garrick,  beginning 

'  Ye  Warwickshire  lads  and  ye  lasses 
See  what  at  our  Jubilee  passes  ; 
Come  revel  away,  rejoice  and  be  glad, 
For  the  lad  of  all  lads  was  a  Warwickshire  lad, 

Warwickshire  lad, 

All  be  glad, 
For  the  lad  of  all  lads  was  a  Warwickshire  lad.' 


JAMES  BOSWELL  69 

Guns  were  fired,  the  magistrates  assembled,  and  there 
was  a  public  breakfast  in  the  town-hall.  In  this  number 
of  the  magazine  there  is  a  letter  extending  to  seven 
columns  from  James  Boswell,  Esq.,  on  his  return  to 
London,  after  being  'much  agitated'  by  'this  jubilee 
of  genius.'  He  describes  it  as  '  truly  an  antique  idea, 
a  Grecian  thought ; '  the  oratorio  at  the  great  Stratford 
church,  with  the  music  by  Dr  Arne,  was,  he  admits,  grand 
and  admirable,  but  'I  could  have  wished  that  prayers 
had  been  read,  and  a  short  sermon  preached/  Then 
the  performance  of  the  dedication  ode  by  Garrick  is 
described  as  '  noble  and  affecting,  like  an  exhibition  in 
Athens  or  Rome.'  Lord  Grosvenor,  at  the  close,  went 
up  to  Garrick,  'and  told  him  that  he  had  affected 
his  whole  frame,  showing  him  his  nerves  and  veins 
still  quivering  with  agitation.'  The  masquerade  our 
traveller,  as  the  '  travelled  thane,'  affects  to  regard  com- 
placently as  an  '  entertainment  not  suited  to  the  genius 
of  the  British  nation,  but  to  a  warmer  country,  where 
the  people  have  a  great  flow  of  spirits,  and  a  readiness 
at  repartee.'  Bozzy  no  doubt  had  seen  the  carnival 
abroad,  and  his  memories  of  sunnier  skies  would  not 
find  congenial  atmosphere  in  the  unpropitious  weather 
when  the  Avon  rose  with  the  floods  of  rain,  the  lower 
grounds  were  laid  under  water,  and  a  guinea  for  a  bed 
was  regarded  as  an  imposition,  though  '  no  one,'  declares 
our  hero,  '  was  understood  to  come  there  who  had  not 
plenty  of  money' — their  own  or  their  father's,  presum- 
ably. The  break  up  seems  to  have  been  effected  in 
confusion,  but  the  good-humoured  mummer,  taking  one 
consideration  with  another,  compares  it  to  eating  an  arti- 
choke, where  'we  have  some  fine  mouthfuls,  but  also 
swallow  the  leaves  and  the  hair,  which  are  confoundedly 
difficult  of  digestion.  After  all,  I  am  highly  satisfied 
with  my  artichoke.' 


70  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

He  brought  '  the  warbling  of  his  muse '  with  him.  It 
is  no  better  or  worse  than  the  staple.  In  the  character 
of  a  Corsican,  he  sings— 

1  From  the  rude  banks  of  Colo's  rapid  flood, , 
Alas  !  too  deeply  tinged  with  patriot  blood ; 
O'er  which,  dejected,  injur'd  Freedom  bends, 
And  sighs  indignant  o'er  all  Europe  sends, 
Behold  a  Corsican  !     In  better  days 
Eager  I  sought  my  country's  fame  to  raise. 
Now  when  I'm  exiled  from  my  native  land 
I  come  to  join  this  classic  festal  band  ; 
To  soothe  my  soul  on  Avon's  sacred  stream, 
And  from  your  joy  to  catch  a  cheering  gleam.' 

After  an  apostrophe  to  happy  Britons,  on  whose  pro- 
pitious isle  propitious  freedom  ever  deigns  to  smile, 
he  closes  with  an  appeal — 

'  But  let  me  plead  for  liberty  distress'd, 
And  warm  for  her  each  sympathetic  breast ; 
Amidst  the  splendid  honours  which  you  bear, 
To  save  a  sister  island  be  your  care  ; 
With  generous  ardour  make  us  also  free, 
And  give  to  Corsica  a  noble  Jubilee. ' 

Colman  and  Foote,  of  course,  as  comedians  were  there, 
but  Goldsmith  and  Johnson  shewed  their  sense  by  their 
absence.  The  only  trace  of  Davy's  old  master  was 
found  in  a  Coventry  ribbon  put  out  by  'a  whimsical 
haberdasher/  with  the  motto  from  Johnson's  Prologue 
at  the  opening  of  Drury  Lane  in  1747 — 'Each  change 
of  many  colour 'd  life  he  drew.' 

Bos  well  had  a  free  hand  as  a  writer  for  the  London 
Magazine,  in  which  he  had  a  proprietary  interest.  To 
it  he  contributed  the  following  account,  accompanied 
with  a  portrait — the  source  of  much  of  Macaulay's 


JAMES  BOSWELL  ?i 

indictment.  '  One  of  the  most  remarkable  masks  upon 
this  occasion  was  James  Bos  well,  Esq.,  in  the  dress  of 
an  armed  Corsican  chief.  He  entered  the  amphitheatre 
about  twelve  o'clock.  He  wore  a  short  dark-coloured 
coat  of  coarse  cloth,  scarlet  waistcoat  and  breeches,  and 
black  spatterdashes;  his  cap  or  bonnet  was  of  black 
cloth ;  on  the  front  of  it  was  embroidered  in  gold  letters 
viva  la  liberta,  and  on  one  side  of  it  was  a  handsome 
blue  feather  and  cockade,  so  that  it  had  an  elegant  as 
well  as  a  warlike  appearance.  On  the  breast  of  his  coat 
was  sewed  a  Moor's  head,  the  crest  of  Corsica,  sur- 
rounded with  branches  of  laurel.  He  had  also  a  cart- 
ridge-pouch, into  which  was  stuck  a  stiletto,  and  on  his 
left  side  a  pistol  was  hung  upon  the  belt  of  his  cartridge- 
pouch.  He  had  a  fusee  slung  across  his  shoulder,  wore 
no  powder  in  his  hair,  but  had  it  plaited  at  full  length 
with  a  knot  of  blue  ribbons  at  the  end  of  it.  He  had, 
by  way  of  a  staff,  a  very  curious  vine  all  of  one  piece, 
emblematical  of  the  sweet  bard  of  Avon.  He  wore  no 
mask,  saying  it  was  not  proper  for  a  gallant  Corsican. 
So  soon  as  he  came  into  the  room  he  drew  universal 
attention.  The  novelty  of  the  Corsican  dress,  its  be- 
coming appearance,  and  the  character  of  the  brave 
nation  concurred  to  distinguish  the  armed  Corsican 
chief.  He  was  first  accosted  by  Mrs  Garrick,  with 
whom  he  had  a  good  deal  of  conversation.  There  was 
an  admirable  dialogue  between  Lord  Grosvenor,  in  the 
character  of  a  Turk,  and  the  Corsican  on  the  different 
constitution  of  the  countries  so  opposite  to  each  other, 
— Despotism  and  Liberty ;  and  Captain  Thomson,  of  the 
navy,  in  the  character  of  an  honest  tar,  kept  it  up  very 
well ;  he  expressed  a  strong  inclination  to  stand  by  the 
brave  islanders.  Mr  Boswell  danced  both  a  minuet  and 
a  country  dance  with  a  very  pretty  lady,  Mrs  Sheldon, 
wife  to  Captain  Sheldon,  of  the  38th  Regiment  of  Foot, 


72  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

who  was  dressed  in  a  genteel  domino,  and  before  she 
danced  threw  off  her  mask/ 

He  adds  a  cool  puff  of  his  own  verses,  '  which,  it  is 
thought,  are  well  suited  to  the  occasion,  while  at  the 
same  time  they  preserve  the  true  Corsican  character/ 
About  a  month  after  this  masquerade,  Goldsmith  dined 
at  Boswell's  lodging  with  Garrick,  Johnson,  Davies, 
and  others,  where  'Goldsmith/  says  the  biographer, 
'strutted  about,  bragging  of  his  dress,  and  I  believe 
was  seriously  vain  of  it,  for  his  mind  was  wonderfully 
prone  to  such  impressions ! '  Bozzy  could  criticise,  as 
on  all  occasions,  the  bloom  coloured  coat  of  '  honest 
Goldsmith/  yet  he  was  eager  for  Garrick  to  fall  in  with 
the  idea  of  the  tradesmen  of  Stratford  to  make  the 
Jubilee  an  annual  event  in  the  interests  of  local  trade, 
and  '  I  flatter  myself  with  the  prospect  of  attending  you 
at  several  more  Jubilees.' 

Though  he  had  again  commenced  in  London  his 
attendance  on  Johnson  and  note-taking,  there  was  now 
a  divided  source  of  attraction.  Things  had  gone  hard 
with  Paoli  since  Boswell  had  been  in  the  island.  In 
spite  of  his  Irish  brigades  and  his  British  volunteers,  the 
overwhelming  forces  which  the  French  were  able  to  put 
in  the  field,  on  the  cession  of  the  island  to  them  by  the 
Genoese,  brought  to  an  end  the  stubborn  resistance  of 
the  inhabitants.  In  the  August  of  1768  Boswell  had 
raised  in  Scotland  a  subscription  of  ^700  for  ordnance 
furnished  by  the  Carron  Iron  Work  Company,  and  in 
1769  there  had  issued  from  the  press  a  little  duodecimo, 
'  British  Essays  in  favour  of  the  Brave  Corsicans : 
collected  and  published  by  James  Boswell,  Esq.'  The 
papers  are  twenty  in  number,  some  by  himself,  others 
by  '  a  gentleman  whose  name  would  do  honour  to  any 
cause  (whom  we  think  to  have  been  Trecothick,  the 
successor  of  Beckford,  as  Lord  Mayor  of  London),  and 


JAMES  BOSWELL  73 

the  greatest  part  furnished  by  persons  unknown  to  me.' 
They  deal  with  the  dangers  to  trade  from  France  and 
the  Bourbon  Compact,  and  point  at  the  value  of  Corsica 
as  a  station  superior  to  Gibraltar  or  Minorca.  One 
paper  signed  'P.  J.'  has  the  undoubted  Boswellian 
touch  in  dealing  with  the  sailors  thrown  idle  by  the  cessa- 
tion of  the  along-shore  Mediterranean  trade.  *  None  are 
less  avaricious  than  our  honest  tars,  nor  have  they,  in 
reality,  any  reason  to  be  discontented.  Every  common 
sailor  has  at  least  five  and  thirty  shillings  a  month, 
over  and  above  which  he  has  his  victuals  and  drink,  and 
that  in  great  abundance.  There  is  no  such  thing  as 
stinting  aboard  a  ship,  unless  when  reduced  to  diffi- 
culties by  stormy  weather.  The  crew  have  their  three 
meals  a  day  regularly,  and  if  they  should  be  hungry 
between  meals,  there  is  always  a  biscuit  or  a  luncheon  of 
something  cold  to  be  had? 

France  had  bought  Corsica  from  Genoa  in  May 
1768.  Marboeuf,  whom  Boswell  had  found  in  the 
island,  had  been  superseded,  and  a  descent  of  the 
French  under  Count  Vaux  with  20,000  men  ended  the 
war.  Paoli  escaped  to  a  ruinous  convent  on  the  shore, 
and,  after  lying  there  in  concealment,  he  embarked  on 
an  English  vessel  bound  for  Leghorn.  On  September 
2oth  he  reached  London,  and  the  Public  Advertizer  of 
October  4th,  through  its  faithful  correspondent,  informed 
its  readers  how  '  On  Sunday  last  General  Paoli,  accom- 
panied by  James  Boswell,  Esq.,  took  an  airing  in  Hyde 
Park  in  his  coach.7  On  the  evening  of  the  loth  he 
was  presented  by  the  traveller  to  Johnson,  who  was 
highly  pleased  with  the  lofty  port  of  the  stranger  and  the 
easy  'elegance  of  manners,  the  brand  of  the  soldier, 
rhomme  tfepee? 

An  impression  is  abroad  that  Boswell's  books  were 
not  taken  seriously.  Nothing  could  be  more  remote 


74  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

from  the  truth.  The  Whigs  were  in  favour  of  his  views, 
and  Burke,  together  with  Frederick  the  Great,  believed 
our  interests  would  suffer  by  the  increase  of  French 
power  in  the  Mediterranean.  Shelburne,  for  Chatham 
had  resigned  before  November  1768,  was  the  advocate 
of  similar  views,  telling  our  ambassador  at  Versailles  to 
remonstrate  with  the  French  court,  while  Junius,  in  his 
letter  to  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  told  the  country  that 
Corsica  would  never  have  been  invaded  by  the  French, 
but  for  the  sight  of  a  weak  and  distracted  ministry. 
When  the  hand  of  Napoleon  was  heavy  on  the  Genoese, 
they  remembered  that  their  cession  of  the  island  had 
made  their  master,  by  his  birth  at  Ajaccio  on  August 
15,  1769,  a  Frenchman.  But  the  nation  at  the  time 
of  BoswelPs  books  was  weary  of  war,  and  their  influence, 
though  great,  was  not  visible  in  any  actual  political 
results. 

Bos  well  had  expected  to  draw  the  sage  on  the  sub- 
ject of  matrimony,  having  promised  himself,  as  he  says, 
a  good  deal  of  instructive  conversation  on  the  conduct 
of  the  married  state.  But  the  oracles  were  dumb.  On 
his  return  to  the  north  he  was  married,  on  the  25th 
November  1769,  to  his  cousin.  We  find  in  the  Scots 
Magazine  of  that  month  the  following  extracts  under 
the  list  of  marriages  : — 

'At  Lainshaw,  in  the  shire  of  Air,  JAMES  BOSWELL,  Esq., 
of  Auchinleck,  advocate,  to  Miss  PEGGY  MONTGOMERY, 
daughter  of  the  late  DAVID  MONTGOMERY  of  Lainshaw, 
Esq.1 

'At  Edinburgh,  ALEXANDER  BOSWELL,  Esq.,  of  Auchin- 
leck, one  of  the  Lords  of  Session  and  Justiciary,  to  Miss 
BETTY  BOSWELL,  second  daughter  of  JOHN  BOSWELL, 
Esq. ,  of  Balmuto,  deceased. ' 


JAMES  BOSWELL  75 

His  father,  now  past  sixty,  had  married  again,  and 
married  a  cousin  for  the  second  time,  like  his  son  on 
the  present  occasion.  That  they  were  married  on  the 
same  day  and  at  different  places  affords  a  clear  indica- 
tion that  the  father  and  son  were  no  longer  on  the  best 
of  terms. 


CHAPTER  IV 

LOVE  AFFAIRS LITERARY  CLUB.       1766-73 

'  How  happy  could  I  be  with  either, 
Were  t'other  dear  charmer  away.' — GAY. 

'  LOVE,'  wrote  Madame  de  Stael,  c  is  with  man  a  thing 
apart,  'tis  woman's  whole  existence.'  This  is  not  true 
at  least  of  Bos  well,  for  his  love  affairs  fill  as  large  a 
part  in  his  life  as  in  that  of  Benjamin  Constant.  A 
most  confused  chapter  withal,  and  one  that  luckily  was 
not  known  to  Macaulay,  whose  colours  would  otherwise 
have  been  more  brilliant.  We  find  Bozzy  paying  his 
addresses  at  one  and  the  same  time  to  at  least  eight 
ladies,  exclusive  as  this  is  of  sundry  minor  divinities  of 
a  fleeting  and  more  temporary  nature  not  calling  here 
for  allusion.  His  first  divinity  was  the  grass-widow  of 
Moffat,  and  here  Temple  had  been  compelled  to  remon- 
strate in  spite  of  all  the  lover's  philandering  about  her 
freedom  from  her  husband,  who  had  used  her  ill.  Were 
she  unfaithful,  he  declares  her  worthy  to  be  'pierced 
with  a  Corsican  dagger,'  but  in  March  he  has  found  it 
too  much  like  a  'settled  plan  of  licentiousness,'  dis- 
covering her  to  be  an  ill-bred  rompish  girl,  debasing  his 
dignity,  without  refinement,  though  handsome  and  lively. 
Then  there  is  the  quarrel  and  the  reconciliation,  she 
vowing  she  loved  him  more  than  ever  she  had  done  her 
husband,  but  meeting  with  opposition  from  his  brother 
76 


JAMES  BOSWELL  77 

David  and  others,  who  furnished  the  love-sick  heart  of 
her  adorer  with  examples  of  her  faithlessness  such  as 
made  him  recoil.  He  vows  now  his  frailties  are  at  an 
end,  and  he  resolves  to  turn  out  an  admirable  member 
of  society.  He  had  broken  with  her  as  with  the 
gardener's  daughter  a  year  ago — an  everlasting  lesson 
to  him. 

By  March  1767  the  reigning  favourite  was  Miss 
Bosville  of  Yorkshire.  But  his  lot  being  cast  in  Scotland 
would  be  an  objection  to  the  beauty;  then  we  hear 
of  a  young  lady  in  the  vicinity  of  whose  claims  Lord 
Auchinleck  approved,  because  their  lands  lay  happily 
together  for  family  extension.  She  was  just  eighteen, 
pious,  good-tempered  and  genteel,  and  for  four  days 
she  had  been  on  a  visit  to  'the  romantick  groves'  of 
his  ancestors,  when  suddenly  the  scene  is  changed  for 
the  Sienese  signora  of  whom  we  heard  upon  his  travels. 
c  My  Italian  angel/  he  cries,  '  is  constant ;  I  had  a  letter 
from  her  but  a  few  days  ago,  which  made  me  cry/ 
He  conjures  his  friend  Temple  to  come  to  him,  and 
'on  that  Arthur  Seat  where  our  youthful  fancies  roved 
abroad  shall  we  take  counsel  together.'  The  local 
divinity  we  learn  is  Miss  Blair  of  Adamtown;  he  has 
been  drinking  her  health,  and  aberrations  from  sobriety 
and  virtue  have  ensued,  but  he  thought  things  would  be 
brought  to  a  climax  were  Temple  to  visit  her.  A  long 
letter  of  commission  follows,  the  envoy  is  instructed  to 
appear  as  his  old  friend,  praising  him  to  Miss  Blair  for 
his  good  qualities.  Temple  is  adjured  to  dwell  upon  his 
odd,  inconstant,  impetuous  nature,  how  he  is  accustomed 
to  women  of  intrigue,  and  he  is  to  ask  of  the  fair  one  if 
she  does  not  think  there  is  insanity  in  the  Boswell 
family.  She  is  to  hear  of  his  travels,  his  acquaintance 
with  foreign  princes,  Voltaire  and  Rousseau,  his  desire 
to  have  a  house  of  his  own ;  and  then  he  diverges  into 


78  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

practicality  when  he  desires  his  friend  to  'study  the 
mother/  and  take  notes  of  all  that  passed,  as  it  might 
have  the  effect  of  fixing  the  fate  of  the  lover.  Temple, 
it  may  be  imagined,  did  not  interpret  his  commission  in 
such  a  literal  spirit,  and  inconstancy  and  insanity  could 
hardly  be  recommendations  in  Miss  Blair's  eyes.  That 
such  should  be  the  case, — outside  the  confessions  of  Mr 
Rochester  in  Jane  Eyre, — would  appear  to  the  com- 
missioner an  obvious  fact. 

A  silence  followed  on  Temple's  departure  from  the 
divinity.  Boswell  dreaded  a  certain  nabob,  '  a  man  of 
copper,'  as  his  rival.  Then  he  believed  the  fair 
offended  by  his  own  Spanish  stateliness  and  gravity ;  and 
again  a  letter,  'written  with  all  the  warmth  of  Italian 
affection,'  restores  the  signora  to  the  first  place,  from 
which  she  is  deposed  by  a  note  from  Miss  Blair, 
explaining  that  his  letter  had  been  delayed  a  week  at 
the  Ayr  post-office.  Then  fresh  ravings,  clouded  by 
the  belief  that  she  is  cunning  and  sees  his  weakness,  for 
three  people  at  Ayr  have  assured  him  she  is  a  jilt,  and 
he  is  shocked  at  the  risk  he  has  run,  a  warning  for  the 
future  to  him  against  '  indulging  the  least  fondness  for 
a  Scotch  lass.'  He  has,  he  feels,  a  soul  of  a  more 
Southern  frame,  and  some  Englishwoman  ought  to  be 
sensible  of  his  merit,  though  the  Dutch  translator  of  his 
Tour,  Mademoiselle  de  Zuyl,  has  been  writing  to  him. 
Random  talking  is  his  dread,  he  must  guard  against  it, 
and  Miss  Blair  revives.  '  I  must  have  her  learn  the 
harpsichord,'  he  cries,  '  and  French ;  she  shall  be  one 
of  the  finest  women  in  the  island.'  Later  on  they  have 
had  a  long  meeting,  of  which  space  only  prevents  the 
inimitable  reproduction, — 'squeezing  and  kissing  her 
fine  hand,  while  she  looked  at  me  with  those  beautiful 
black  eyes.'  He  meets  her  at  the  house  of  Lord 
Kames,  he  sees  her  at  Othello — she  was  in  tears  at 


JAMES  BOSWELL  79 

the  affecting  scenes,  and  'rather  leaned1  to  him  (he 
thought),  and  *  the  jealous  Moor  described  my  own  soul.' 
But  true  love  did  never  yet  run  smooth ;  he  has  been 
'  as  wild  as  ever.  Trust  me  in  time  coming ;  I  will 
give  you  my  word  of  honour/  Then — curious  psycho- 
logical trait — 'to-morrow  I  shall  be  happy  with  my 
devotions/ 

By  the  beginning  of  1768  he  fears  all  is  over.  A 
rumour — a  false  one  as  it  proved — had  reached  him 
that  the  divinity  was  to  be  married  to  Sir  Alexander 
Gilmour,  M.P.  for  Midlothian.  He  gets  friendly  with 
the  nabob,  warms  him  with  old  claret,  and  bewails  with 
him  their  hapless  devotion.  They  agree  to  propose  in 
turn,  and,  being  in  turn  rejected,  he  feels  sure  that  '  a 
Howard,  or  some  other  of  the  noblest  in  the  kingdom ' 
is  to  be  his  fate.  The  Dutch  translator  again  holds  the 
field,  to  be  soon  dismissed  for  her  frivolity  and  her 
infidelity.  Then  Miss  Dick  of  Prestonfield  reigns  with 
solid  qualifications — she  lacks  a  fortune,  but  is  fine, 
young,  healthy,  and  amiable.  A  visit  to  Holland,  to 
finally  decide  on  the  Mademoiselle's  claims,  was  pro- 
posed, but  his  father,  warned  in  time,  would  not 
consent.  Temple,  too,  was  against  this,  and  'Temple 
thou  reasonest  well/  he  cries,  and  thinks  his  abnegation 
will  be  a  solace  to  his  worthy  father  on  his  circuit. 
Freed  now  from  Miss  Blair  and  the  Dutch  divinity,  he 
is  devoted  to  la  belle  Irlandaise,  'just  sixteen,  with  the 
sweetest  countenance  and  a  Dublin  education/  Never 
till  now  had  he  been  so  truly  in  love ;  every  flower  is 
united,  and  she  is  a  rose  without  a  thorn.  Her  name 
'  Mary  Anne '  he  has  carved  upon  a  tree,  and  cutting 
off  a  lock  of  her  hair  she  had  promised  Bozzy  not  to 
marry  a  lord  before  March,  or  forget  him.  '  Sixteen/ 
he  says ;  '  innocence  and  gaiety  make  me  quite  a  Sicilian 


8o  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

His  book  had  dissipated  his  professional  energies, 
and  he  had  even  taken  to  gaming.  Incidentally  we 
learn  that  he  had  lost  more  than  he  could  pay,  and  that 
Mr  Sheridan  had  advanced  enough  to  clear  him,  on  a 
promise  that  he  should  not  engage  in  play  for  three  years. 
Mary  Anne  has  added  to  his  complications  by  her 
forgetfulness,  and  the  local  candidate  Miss  Blair  re- 
appears. Favoured  as  she  was  by  his  father,  it  would 
have  been  easy  to  bring  things  to  a  climax,  but  on  her 
mother's  part  there  was  some  not  unnatural  coldness 
over  his  indiscreet  talk  about  his  love  of  the  heiress. 
Bozzy  was  a  convivial  knight-errant  in  what  was  called 
'Saving  the  ladies.'  At  clubs  and  gatherings  any 
member  would  toast  his  idol  in  a  bumper,  and  then 
another  champion  would  enter  his  peerless  Dulcinea  in 
two  bumpers,  to  be  routed  by  the  original  toper  taking 
off  four.  The  deepest  drinker  '  saved'  his  lady/  as  the 
phrase  ran ;  though,  says  George  Thomson  speaking  of 
the  old  concerts  in  St  Cecilia's  Hall,  at  the  foot  of 
Niddry's  Wynd,  which  were  maintained  by  noblemen 
and  gentlemen,  the  bold  champion  had  often  consider- 
able difficulty  in  saving  himself  from  the  floor,  in  his 
efforts  to  regain  his  seat !  Miss  Burnet  of  Monboddo, 
celebrated  by  Burns,  and  Miss  Betty  Home,  he 
describes  as  the  reigning  beauties  of  the  time  deeply 
involved  in  thus  causing  the  fall  of  man.  Boswell  was 
not  behind,  and  he  ascribes  his  aberrations  to  the 
'  drinking  habit  which  still  prevails  in  Scotland,' 
renewing  good  intentions,  only  to  be  broken  in  the 
same  letter  that  reveals  the  Moffat  lady  again,  '  like  a 
girl  of  eighteen,  with  the  finest  black  hair,'  whom  he 
loves  so  much  that  he  is  in  a  fever.  '  This?  he  adds 
truly  enough,  'is  unworthy  of  Paoti s friend? 

The  May  of  1769  saw  him  in  Ireland,  where  his 
relations  in  County  Down  secured  his  entry  into  the 


JAMES  BOS  WELL  81 

best  society.  A  dispatch  to  the  Public  Advertize^  of 
July  yth,  informed  the  public  that  'James  Boswell, 
Esq.,  dined  with  His  Grace  the  Duke  of  Leinster  at 
his  seat  at  Carton.  He  went  by  special  invitation  to 
meet  the  Lord  Lieutenant ;  came  next  morning  with 
his  Excellency  to  the  Phoenix  Park,  where  he  was 
present  at  a  review  of  Sir  Joseph  Yorke's  dragoons ; 
he  dined  with  the  Lord  Mayor,  and  is  now  set  out  on 
his  return  to  Scotland.'  The  belle  Irlandaise  had 
forgotten  him,  but  it  is  to  this  occasion  that  we  may 
refer  some  verses  that  were  published  by  his  son  Sir 
Alexander.  Chambers  thinks  they  refer  to  his  cousin, 
but  the  general  belief  tends  in  the  direction  of  the 
notorious  Margaret  Caroline  Rudd,  the  associate  in 
later  years  of  the  brothers  Perreau,  who  were  executed 
for  forgery.  In  the  Life  of  Johnson  we  find  Boswell, 
in  1776,  expressing  to  his  companion  a  desire  to  be 
introduced  to  this  person,  so  celebrated  for  her  address 
and  insinuation,  and  later  on  he  is  shewn,  on  his  own 
confession,  to  have  visited  her,  'induced  by  the  fame 
of  her  talents  and  irresistible  power  of  fascination,' 
and  to  have  sent  an  account  of  this  interview  to  his 
wife,  but  to  have  offered  its  perusal  first,  'as  it  ap- 
peared to  me  highly  entertaining,'  to  Temple,  who 
was  indignant  over  it.  It  would  appear,  then,  that 
Boswell  did  not  reveal  to  Johnson  his  former  flirtation 
with  this  notorious  woman,  but  we  think  that  the  obvious 
marks  of  the  brogue  in  the  verses  shew  conclusively  that 
either  the  feeling  was  imitative  and  based  on  an  earlier 
Irish  song,  or  that  the  verses  were  judged  by  BoswelFs 
son,  not  too  devoted,  as  we  shall  find,  to  his  father's 
memory,  to  be  free  from  offence. 

'  O  Larghan  Clanbrassil,  how  sweet  is  thy  sound, 
To  my  tender  remembrance  as  Love's  sacred  ground  ; 


8s  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

For  there  Marg'ret  Caroline  first  charm'd  my  sight, 
And  fill'd  my  young  heart  with  a  flutt'ring  delight. 

When  I  thought  her  my  own,  ah  !  too  short  seemed  the  day 
For  a  jaunt  to  Downpatrick,  or  a  trip  on  the  sea  ; 
To  express  what  I  felt,  then  all  language  was  vain, 
'Twas  in  truth  what  the  poets  have  studied  to  feign. 

But,  too  late,  I  found  even  she  could  deceive^ 
And  nothing  was  left  but  to  sigh,  weep,  and  rave  ; 
Distracted,  I  flew  from  my  dear  native  shore, 
Resolved  to  see  Larghan  Clanbrassil  no  more. 

Yet  still  in  some  moments  enchanted  I  find 
A  ray  of  her  fondness  beams  soft  on  my  mind  ; 
While  thus  in  bless'd  fancy  my  angel  I  see, 
All  the  world  is  a  Larghan  Clanbrassil  to  me.' 

On  this  journey  with  Boswell  there  was  a  Margaret — 
his  own  cousin,  and  it  is  curious  to  find  him  in  this 
mood  of  sentimental  philandering,  were  it  no  worse, 
when  we  have  now  to  see  Bozzy  at  the  end  of  his  love 
affairs.  When  his  great  work  was  completed  in  1791, 
its  author  contributed  to  the  European  Magazine  for 
May  and  June  a  little  sketch  of  himself,  in  order  to  give 
a  fillip  to  its  circulation.  There  he  describes  jauntily 
his  Irish  tour,  and  after  what  we  know  of  his  erratic 
course,  it  is  delightful  to  come  across  this  sage  chronicler 
of  his  dead  wife,  circulating  testimonials  to  her  excellences, 
to  which  no  doubt  he  was  oblivious  in  her  lifetime. 
'  They  had/  he  writes,  '  from  their  earliest  years  lived 
in  the  most  intimate  and  unreserved  friendship.'  His 
love  of  the  fair  sex  has  been  already  mentioned  (he  had 
quoted  the  song  of  *  the  Soapers '  in  our  first  chapter), 
and  she  was  the  constant  yet  prudent  and  delicate 
confidante  of  all  his  *  egarements  du  coeur  et  de  V esprit? 
This  we  may  doubt,  and  the  gracefully  allusive  French 
quotation  reminds  us  of  Mr  Pepys'  use  of  that  language 


JAMES  BOSWELL  83 

when  his  wife  was  in  his  mind.  This  jaunt  was  the 
occasion  of  Mr  Bos  well's  resolving  at  last  to  engage 
himself  in  that  connection  to  which  he  had  always 
declared  himself  averse.  In  short,  he  determined  to 
become  a  married  man.  He  requested  her,  with 
her  excellent  judgment  and  more  sedate  manners, 
to  do  him  the  favour  of  accepting  him  with  all  his 
faults,  and  though  he  assures  his  readers  he  had  uni- 
formly protested  that  a  large  fortune  had  been  with  him 
a  requisite  in  the  fair,  he  was  yet  ( willing  to  waive  that 
in  consideration  of  her  peculiar  merit ! ' 

Hearts  are  caught  in  the  rebound,  and  Bozzy  had 
solaced  his  loss  of  the  belle  Irlandaise  with  the  sympathy 
of  his  fellow-traveller.  Having  let  his  fancies  roam  so 
far  abroad  as  Siena  and  Holland,  the  lover  had  now 
returned  like  the  bird  at  evening  to  the  nest  from  which 
it  flew.  She  had  no  fortune,  and  '  the  penniless  lass 
wi'  the  lang  pedigree,'  related  as  she  was  to  the 
Eglintoun  branch  and  other  high  families,  had  not  in 
the  eyes  of  his  father  the  landed  qualifications  of  Miss 
Blair,  whose  property  lay  so  convenient  for  the  extension 
of  the  Boswell  acres.  This  may  have  been  the  cause  of 
the  paternal  anger  and  the  separate  marriages  on  the 
same  day.  The  wives  of  literary  men  have  ever  been  a 
fruitful  source  of  disquisition  to  the  admirers  of  their 
heroes,  and  Terentia,  Gemma  Donati,  and  Anne 
Hathaway,  have  divided  the  biographers  of  Cicero, 
Dante,  and  Shakespeare.  To  us  it  seems  that,  like  his 
father,  she  had  much  to  bear,  hampered  by  their 
domestic  difficulties  through  her  husband's  constant 
dependence  on  that  father  for  his  income,  and  eyed 
with  undeserved  suspicion  by  the  judge  and  his  second 
wife  as  a  Mordecai  in  the  gate,  penniless  and  yet 
supposed  to  be  the  cause  of  Boswell's  pecuniary  em- 
barrassments and  indiscretions.  The  marriage  was 


84  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

deferred  till  after  the  Stratford  Jubilee,  and  the  newly 
married  pair  took  up  their  house  in  ChessePs  Buildings 
in  the  Canongate.  For  a  year  and  a  half  after  his 
marriage  his  correspondence  with  Johnson  underwent 
an  entire  cessation,  and  in  the  August  of  1771  General 
Paoli  made  a  tour  in  Scotland,  which,  for  a  time,  called 
forth  the  best  organizing  abilities  of  his  friend.  From 
the  London  Magazine  of  the  day,  in  an  account  contri- 
buted by  our  hero,  we  learn  how  Paoli  had  paid  'a 
visit  to  James  Boswell,  Esq.,  who  was  the  first  gentleman 
of  this  country  who  visited  Corsica,  and  whose  writings 
have  made  the  brave  islanders  and  their  general  pro- 
perly known  over  Europe.'  Boswell  waited  on  the 
exile  and  the  Polish  Ambassador  at  Ramsay's  Inn,  at 
the  foot  of  St  Mary's  Wynd,  visiting  with  them 
Linlithgow  and  Carron,  'where  the  general  had  a 
prodigious  pleasure  in  viewing  the  forge  where  were 
formed  the  cannon  and  war-like  stores  '  sent  to  Corsica 
by  his  Scottish  admirers.  At  Glasgow  they  were 
entertained  by  the  professors,  and  saw  'the  elegant 
printing  of  the  Scottish  Stephani,  the  Messrs  Foulis,' 
and  no  doubt  their  guide  managed  to  remind  their 
excellencies  of  a  certain  Tour  in  Corsica  emanating 
thence.  Auchinleck  was  visited  to  'the  joy  of  my 
worthy  father  and  me  at  seeing  the  Corsican  Hero  in 
our  romantick  groves/  as  he  tells  Garrick,  and  on  their 
return  to  Glasgow  the  freedom  of  the  city  was  conferred 
on  Paoli  by  Lord  Provost  Dunlop.*  At  Edinburgh 
'  the  general  slept  under  the  roof  of  his  ever  grateful 
friend.'  The  whole  forms  a  favourable  specimen  of 
BoswelPs  organizing  capacities,  and  viewed  in  relation 

*  By  the  Town  Clerk  Depute  of  Glasgow,  R.  Renwick,  Esq.,  we 
are  informed  that  no  notice  of  this  enrolment  of  General  Paoli  was 
entered  at  the  time,  pursuant  to  the  custom  of  the  Register  over 
honorary  burgesships. 


JAMES  BOSWELL  85 

to  the  friendly  intercourse  he  is  found  maintaining  with 
prominent  and  influential  persons,  our  regret  is  but 
increased  that  in  the  interests  of  his  wife  and  children 
his  abilities  were  not  exercised  in  a  more  strictly 
professional  channel. 

London  he  visited  in  the  March  of  1772  over  an 
appeal  to  the  Lords  from  the  Court  of  Session.  John- 
son was  now  in  good  health,  and  was  eager  'to  see 
Beattie's  College/  In  the  Scots  Magazine  for  February 
1773  there  is  mentioned  a  masked  ball,  attended  by 
seventy  persons  of  quality,  given  in  Edinburgh  by  Sir 
Alexander  Macdonald  and  his  wife,  Miss  Bosville  of 
Yorkshire,  one  of  Boswell's  loves.  Croker  says  that  the 
masquerade  for  which  he  was  rallied  by  Johnson  was 
given  by  the  Dowager  Countess  of  Fife,  and  that  Bozzy 
went  as  a  dumb  conjurer ;  but  from  the  expression  of  the 
Magazine,  '  an  entertainment  little  known  in  this  part 
of  the  Kingdom/  coupled  with  the  words  employed  by 
Johnson,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Croker  is  wrong, 
and  that  the  host  on  this  occasion  was  the  churlish  chief, 
whose  inhospitable  ways  they  were  to  experience  in  Skye. 
He  was  now  near  the  great  honour  of  his  life,  admission 
to  that  Literary  Club,  of  which,  said  Sir  William  Jones, 
'  I  will  only  say  that  there  is  no  branch  of  human  know- 
ledge on  which  some  of  our  members  are  not  capable  of 
giving  information.'  Never  was  honour  better  deserved 
or  better  repaid.  Without  his  record  the  fame  of  that 
club  would  have  passed  away,  surviving  at  best  in  some 
sort  of  hazy  companionship  with  the  Kit-Cat,  Button's, 
Will's,  and  other  clubs  and  assemblies.  Never  was  there 
a  club  of  which  each  member  was  better  qualified  to 
take  care  of  his  own  fame  with  posterity.  None  of 
Johnson's  associates  would  have  hesitated  in  declaring 
an  extended  date  of  renown  for  the  Rambler ;  and  per- 
haps he  himself  would  have  staked  the  reputation 


86  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

assured,  as  Cowper  said,  by  the  tears  of  bards  and 
heroes  in  order  to  immortalize  the  dead,  on  his  Rasselas 
or  the  Dictionary.  Yet  he  and  most  members  of  that 
club,  apart  from  the  record  of  Boswell,  would  be  but 
names  to  the  literary  antiquary,  and  be  by  the  mass  of 
readers  entirely  forgotten. 

He  had  canvassed  the  members.  Johnson  wrote,  on 
April  23rd,  to  Goldsmith,  who  was  in  the  chair  that 
evening,  to  consider  Boswell  as  proposed  by  himself  in 
his  absence.  On  the  night  of  the  ballot,  April  3oth, 
Boswell  dined  at  Beauclerk's,  where,  after  the  company 
had  gone  to  the  club,  he  was  left  till  the  fate  of  his 
election  should  be  announced.  After  Johnson  had  taken 
the  thing  in  hand  there  was  not  much  danger,  yet  poor 
Bozzy  '  sat  in  a  state  of  anxiety  which  even  the  charm- 
ing conversation  of  Lady  Di  Beauclerk  could  not  entirely 
dissipate.'  There  he  received  the  tidings  of  his  election, 
and  he  hastened  to  the  place  of  meeting.  Burke  he  met 
that  night  for  the  first  time,  and  on  his  entrance,  Johnson, 
'  with  humorous  formality,  gave  me  a  charge,  pointing  out 
the  conduct  expected  from  me  as  a  good  member  of  the 
club/  That  charge  we  can  believe  Forster  to  be  right 
in  suspecting  to  be  a  caution  against  publishing  abroad 
the  proceedings  and  the  talk  of  the  members. 

In  the  autumn  of  the  year,  as  they  drew  near  to 
Monboddo,  Johnson,  we  should  think  with  excessive 
rudeness,  told  him  *  several  of  the  members  wished  to 
keep  you  out.  Burke  told  me,  he  doubted  if  you  were 
fit  for  it :  but,  now  you  are  in,  none  of  them  are  sorry. 
Burke  says,  that  you  have  so  much  good  humour 
naturally,  it  is  scarce  a  virtue.'  The  faithful  Bozzy 
replied,  '  They  were  afraid  of  you,  sir,  as  it  was  you  who 
proposed  me ; '  and  the  doctor  was  prone  to  admit  that 
if  the  one  blackball  necessary  to  exclude  had  been  given, 
they  knew  they  never  would  have  got  in  another  mem- 


JAMES  BOSWELL  87 

her.  Yet  even  from  this  rebuff  he  managed  to  deftly 
extract  a  compliment.  Beauclerk,  the  doctor  said,  had 
been  very  earnest  for  the  admission,  and  Beauclerk, 
replied  Boswell,  '  has  a  keenness  of  mind  which  is  very 
uncommon/  The  witty  Topham,  along  with  Reynolds, 
Garrick,  and  others,  is  immortalized  in  the  pages  of  the 
man  who  was  not  thought  by  the  wits  of  Gerrard  Street 
fit  for  their  club. 


CHAPTER  V 

TOUR   TO    THE    HEBRIDES.       1773 

'  Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 
Among  the  farthest  Hebrides.' — WORDSWORTH. 

WHEN  Bos  well  was  leaving  London  in  May  he  called, 
for  the  last  time,  upon  Goldsmith,  round  whom  the 
clouds  of  misfortune  were  fast  settling,  and  who  was 
planning  a  Dictionary  of  Arts  and  Sciences  as  a  means 
of  extrication  from  his  embarrassments.  In  such  circum- 
stances, it  was  not  unnatural  for  Goldsmith  to  revert  to 
his  own  past  travels,  and  to  the  reflection  that  he  was 
unlikely  again  to  set  out  upon  them,  unless  sheltered 
like  Johnson  behind  a  pension.  He  assured  Boswell 
that  he  would  never  be  able  to  lug  the  dead  weight  of 
the  Rambler  through  the  Highlands.  The  enthusiastic 
pioneer,  however,  was  loud  in  the  praises  of  his  com- 
panion ;  Goldsmith  thought  him  not  equal  to  Burke, 
( who  winds  into  a  subject  like  a  serpent.'  The  other, 
with  more  than  wonted  irrelevance,  maintained  that 
Johnson  was  '  the  Hercules  who  strangled  serpents 
in  his  cradle ; '  and  with  these  characteristic  utterances 
they  parted,  never  again  to  meet.  Throughout  his 
great  work,  Boswell  shews  ever  a  curious  depreciation 
of  Goldsmith.  Rivalry  for  the  good  graces  of  their 
common  friend  Johnson,  as  Scott  thought,  and  the  fear 
of  his  older  acquaintance  as  the  possible  biographer 


JAMES  BOSWELL  89 

made  him  suspicious  of  the  merits  of  the  poet,  who 
figures  in  the  pages  of  Boswell  as  a  foil  for  his  gently 
patronizing  tone, — *  honest  Goldsmith.' 

The  tour  to  the  Hebrides  had  been  a  project  which 
had  occurred  to  them  in  the  first  days  of  their  friendship. 
The  Description  of  the  Western  Isles  of  Scotland  (1703) 
by  Martin,  had  been  put  into  Johnson's  hands  at  a  very 
early  age  by  his  father  ;  and,  though  for  long  he  had  dis- 
appointed the  expectations  of  his  friend,  he  had  talked 
of  it  in  the  spring  of  this  year  in  such  a  way  as  to  lead 
Boswell  to  write  to  Beattie,  Robertson,  Lord  Elibank, 
and  the  chiefs  of  the  Macdonalds  and  the  Macleods, 
for  invitations  such  as  he  could  shew  the  doctor.  Mrs 
Thrale  also  and  others  were  induced  to  forward  the 
scheme,  and  at  last  the  Rambler  set  out  on  the  6th  day 
of  August.  He  was  nine  days  upon  the  road,  including 
two  at  Newcastle,  where  he  picked  up  his  friend  Scott 
(Lord  Stowell),  and  after  passing  Berwick,  Dunbar  and 
Prestonpans,  the  coach  late  in  the  evening  deposited 
Johnson  at  Boyd's  inn,  The  White  Horse^  in  the 
Canongate, — the  rendezvous  of  the  old  Hanoverian 
faction, — which  occupied  the  site  of  the  present  building 
from  which  this  volume,  one  hundred  and  twenty-three 
years  later,  is  published.  On  the  Saturday  evening  of 
his  arrival  a  note  was  dispatched  by  him  to  Boswell, 
who  flew  to  him,  and  'exulted  in  the  thought  that  I 
now  had  him  actually  in  Caledonia.' 

Arm  in  arm  they  walked  up  the  High  Street  to 
BoswelPs  house  in  James's  Court,  to  which  he  had 
removed  from  the  Canongate.  The  first  impression 
of  the  Scottish  capital  was  not  pleasing,  for  at  ten  the 
beat  of  the  city  drums  was  heard ;  and,  amid  cries  of 
gardy  loo,  what  Oldham  euphemistically  calls  'the 
perils  of  the  night,'  were  thrown  over  the  windows 
down  on  the  pavement,  in  the  absence  of  covered 


90  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

sewers.  When  Captain  Burt  before  this  time  had 
been  in  Edinburgh,  a  '  caddie '  had  preceded  him  on 
a  scouting  expedition  with  cries  of  '  haud  your  han',' 
and  among  flank  and  rear  discharges  he  had  passed 
to  his  quarters.  A  zealous  Scotsman,  as  Bqswell  says, 
could  have  wished  the  doctor  to  be  less  gifted  with  the 
sense  of  smell,  however  much  the  sense  of  the  breadth 
of  the  street  and  the  height  of  the  buildings  impressed 
him.  His  wife  had  tea  waiting,  and  they  sat  till  two 
in  the  morning.  To  shew  respect  for  the  sage,  Mrs 
Bos  well  had  given  up  her  own  room,  which  her 
husband  '  cannot  but  gratefully  mention,  as  one  of 
a  thousand  obligations  which  I  owe  her,  since  the  great 
obligation  of  her  being  pleased  to  accept  of  me  as  her 
husband/ 

Next  morning,  on  the  Sunday,  Mr  Scott  and  Sir 
Wm.  Forbes  of  Pitsligo  breakfasted  with  them,  and  the 
host's  heart  was  delighted  by  the  'little  infantine 
noise '  which  his  child  Veronica  made,  with  the 
appearance  of  listening  to  the  great  man.  The  fond 
father  with  a  cheerful  recklessness,  not  realized  we 
fear,  declared  she  should  have  for  this  five  hundred 
pounds  of  additional  fortune. 

The  best  society  in  the  capital  was  invited  to  meet 
Johnson  at  breakfast  and  dinner — Robertson,  Hailes, 
Gregory,  Blacklock,  and  others.  James's  Court  was 
rather  a  distinguished  part  of  the  city,  and  an  improve- 
ment upon  the  former  quarters  in  Chessel's  Buildings. 
The  inhabitants,  says  Robert  Chambers,  took  them- 
selves so  seriously  as  to  keep  a  clerk  to  record  their 
proceedings,  together  with  a  scavenger  of  their  own, 
and  held  among  themselves  their  social  meetings  and 
balls.  Hume  had  occupied  part  of  the  house  before 
Johnson's  visit,  though  three  years  had  passed  since  he 
had  moved  to  the  new  town  into  St  David  Street. 


JAMES  BOSW££&iSS^  91 


Writing  from  his  old  house  to  Adam  Smith,  he  is 
glad  to  '  have  come  within  sight  of  you,  and  to  have 
a  view  of  Kirkcaldy  from  my  windows ; '  the  study 
of  the  historian,  to  which  he  turned  fondly  from  the 
Parisian  salons ',  is  represented  in  Guy  Mannering  as 
the  library  of  Pleydell  with  its  fine  view  from  the 
windows,  'which  commanded  that  incomparable  pros- 
pect of  the  ground  between  Edinburgh  and  the  sea, 
the  Firth  of  Forth  with  its  islands,  and  the  varied  shore 
of  Fife  to  the  northward/  Bozzy  may  have  been 
reticent  about  the  former  tenant;  he  was  'not  clear 
that  it  was  right  in  me  to  keep  company  with  him,' 
though  he  thought  the  man  greater  or  better  than 
his  books.  No  word  then  was  sent  to  him,  nor  to 
Adam  Smith  across  the  Forth  to  Kirkcaldy.  They 
visited  the  Parliament  House,  where  Harry  Erskine 
was  presented  to  Johnson,  and,  having  made  his  bow, 
slipped  a  shilling  into  Boswell's  hand,  '  for  the  sight  of 
his  bear.'  Holyrood  and  the  University  were  in- 
spected, and  as  they  passed  up  the  College-Wynd, 
where  Goldsmith  in  his  medical  student  days  in  Edin- 
burgh had  lived,  Scott,  as  a  child  of  two  years,  may 
have  seen  the  party.  On  the  i8th  they  set  out  from 
the  capital,  with  the  Parthian  shot  from  Lord  Auchin- 
leck  to  a  friend — 'there's  nae  hope  for  Jamie,  man; 
Jamie  is  gaen  clean  gyte.  What  do  you  think,  man  ? 
He's  done  wi'  Paoli.  He's  off  wi'  the  land-louping 
scoundrel  of  a  Corsican,  and  whose  tail  do  you  think 
he  has  pinned  himself  to  now,  man?  A  dominie, 
an  auld  dominie;  he  keepit  a  schule  and  ca'ad  it  an 
acaadamy ! "  No  more  bitter  taunt  could  have  been 
levelled  against  Johnson,  with  his  memories  of  Edial, 
near  Lichfield  ;  readers  who  may  remember  the 
munificent  manner  in  which  the  heritors  of  their  day 
had  provided  for  Ruddiman,  Michael  Bruce,  and  others, 


92  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

will  see  the  contempt  that  the  old  judge  had  felt  for  the 
past  of  the  Rambler.  Johnson  had  left  behind  him 
in  a  drawer  a  volume  of  his  diary ;  and,  as  this  would 
have  been  excellent  copy  for  his  projected  Life^  we 
feel  the  temptation  to  which  Boswell  was  .exposed. 
1 1  wish/  he  says  naively,  '  that  female  curiosity  had 
been  strong  enough  to  have  had  it  all  transcribed ; 
which  might  easily  have  been  done;  and  I  think  the 
theft,  being  pro  bono  publico,  might  have  been  forgiven. 
But  I  may  be  wrong.  My  wife  told  me  she  never 
once  had  looked  into  it.  She  did  not  seem  quite  easy 
when  we  left  her ;  but  away  we  went ! ' 

The  character-sketch  of  Johnson,  given  at  the 
opening  of  the  book  is  full  of  fine  shading  and 
touches ;  but  the  traveller  who  now  follows  them  on  the 
journey  will  hardly,  in  comparison  with  his  own  tourist 
attire,  recognise  what  in  1773  was  thought  fit  and 
convenient  costume. 

*  He  wore  a  full  suit  of  plain  brown  clothes,  with  twisted  hair 
buttons  of  the  same  colour,  a  large  bushy  greyish  wig,  a  plain  shirt, 
black  worsted  stockings,  and  silver  buckles.  Upon  this  tour,  when 
journeying,  he  wore  boots,  and  a  very  wide  brown  cloth  greatcoat, 
with  pockets  which  might  have  almost  held  the  two  volumes  of  his 
folio  Dictionary ;  and  he  carried  in  his  hand  a  large  English  oak 
stick.  Let  me  not  be  censured  for  mentioning  such  minute  particu- 
lars. Everything  relative  to  so  great  a  man  is  worth  observing.  I 
remember  Dr  Adam  Smith,  in  his  rhetorical  lectures  at  Glasgow, 
told  us  he  was  glad  to  know  that  Milton  wore  latchets  in  his  shoes, 
instead  of  buckles.' 

A  companion  vignette  of  himself  is  added  by  Boswell. 

'A  gentleman  of  ancient  blood,  the  pride  of  which  was  his 
predominant  passion.  He  was  then  in  his  thirty-third  year,  and 
had  been  about  four  years  happily  married.  His  inclination  was  to 
be  a  soldier  ;  but  his  father  had  pressed  him  into  the  profession  of 


JAMES  BOSWELL  93 

the  law.  He  had  travelled  a  good  deal,  and  seen  many  varieties 
of  human  life.  He  had  thought  more  than  anyone  had  supposed, 
and  had  a  pretty  good  stock  of  general  learning  and  knowledge. 
He  had  rather  too  little,  than  too  much  prudence ;  and,  his 
imagination  being  lively,  he  often  said  things  of  which  the  effect 
was  very  different  from  the  intention.  He  resembled  sometimes 

'  The  best  good  man,  with  the  worst  natur'd  muse.' 

The  doctor  who  was  thrifty  over  this  tour  had  not 
thought  it  necessary  to  bring  his  own  black  servant ; 
but  Boswell's  man,  Joseph  Ritter,  a  Bohemian,  a  fine 
stately  fellow  over  six  feet,  who  had  been  over  much  of 
Europe,  was  invaluable  to  them  in  their  journey.  For 
this  the  valiant  Rambler  had  provided  a  pair  of  pistols, 
powder,  and  a  quantity  of  bullets,  but  the  assurance  of 
their  needlessness  had  induced  him  to  leave  them 
behind  with  the  precious  diary  in  the  keeping  of  Mrs 
Boswell. 

Such  a  tour  was  then  a  feat  for  a  man  of  sixty-four, 
in  a  country  which,  to  the  Englishman  of  his  day,  was  as 
unknown  as  St  Kilda  is  now  to  the  mass  of  Scotchmen. 
The  London  citizen  who,  says  Lockhart,  'makes  Loch 
Lomond  his  wash-pot,  and  throws  his  shoe  over  Ben 
Nevis/  can  with  difficulty  imagine  a  journey  in  the 
Hebrides  with  rainy  weather,  in  open  boats,  or  upon 
horseback  over  wild  moorland  and  morasses,  a  journey 
that  even  to  Voltaire  sounded  like  a  tour  to  the  North 
Pole.  Smollett,  in  Humphrey  Clinker,  says  the  people 
at  the  other  end  of  the  island  knew  as  little  of  Scotland 
as  they  did  of  Japan,  nor  was  Charing  Cross,  witness  as 
it  did  the  greatest  height  of  c  the  tide  of  human  exist- 
ence,' then  bright  with  the  autumnal  trips  of  circular 
tours  and  Macbrayne  steamers.  The  feeling  for  scenery, 
besides,  was  in  its  infancy,  nor  was  it  scenery  but  men 
and  manners  that  were  sought  by  our  two  travellers,  to 


94  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

whom  what  would  now  be  styled  the  Wordsworthian 
feeling  had  little  or  no  interest.  Gibbon  has  none  of 
it,  and  Johnston  laughed  at  Shenstone  for  not  caring 
whether  his  woods  and  streams  had  anything  good  to 
eat  in  them,  'as  if  one  could  fill  one's  belly  with 
hearing  soft  murmurs  or  looking  at  rough  cascades. ' 
Fleet  Street  to  him  was  more  delicious  than  Tempe, 
and  the  bare  scent  of  the  pastoral  draws  an  angry  snort 
from  the  critic.  Boswell,  in  turn,  confesses  to  no  relish 
for  nature;  he  admits  he  has  no  pencil  for  visible 
objects,  but  only  for  varieties  of  mind  and  esprit.  The 
Critical  Review  congratulated  the  public  on  a  fortunate 
event  in  the  annals  of  literature  for  the  following 
account  in  Johnson's  Journey — '  I  sat  down  on  a  bank, 
such  as  a  writer  of  romance  might  have  delighted  to 
feign.  I  had,  indeed,  no  trees  to  whisper  over  my  head 
but  a  clear  rivulet  streamed  at  my  feet.  The  day  was 
calm,  the  air  soft,  and  all  was  rudeness,  silence  and 
solitude.  Before  me,  and  on  either  side,  were  high 
hills,  which,  if  hindering  the  eye  from  ranging,  forced 
the  mind  to  find  entertainment  for  itself/  This,  little 
more  than  the  reflections  of  a  Cockney  on  a  hayrick,  is 
as  far  as  the  eighteenth  century  could  go,  nor  need  we 
wonder  that  the  Rambler's  moralizing  at  lona  struck  so 
much  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  the  President  of  the  Royal 
Society,  that  he  'clasped  his  hands  together,  and 
remained  for  some  time  in  an  attitude  of  silent  admira- 
tion/ Burns  himself,  as  Prof.  Veitch  has  rightly 
indicated,  has  little  of  the  later  feeling  and  regards 
barren  nature  with  the  unfavourable  eyes  of  the  farmer 
and  the  practical  agriculturist,  nor  has  the  travelled 
Goldsmith  more  to  shew.  Writing  from  Edinburgh,  he 
laments  that  'no  grove  or  brook  lend  their  music  to 
cheer  the  stranger,'  while  at  Ley  den,  'wherever  I 
turned  my  eye,  fine  houses,  elegant  gardens,  statues, 


JAMES  BOSWELL  95 

grottoes,  presented  themselves.'  Even  Gray  found  that 
Mount  Cenis  carried  the  permission  mountains  have  of 
being  frightful  rather  too  far,  and  Wordsworth  and 
Shelley  would  have  resented  the  Johnsonian  description 
of  a  Highland  Ben  as  'a  considerable  protuberance.' 
Indeed,  Goldsmith's  bare  mention  of  that  object,  so 
dear  to  Pope  and  his  century, — '  grottoes ' — reminds  us 
we  are  not  yet  in  the  modern  world.  Yet  the  boldness 
of  the  sage,  and  the  cheerfulness  of  Boswell,  carried 
them  through  it  all.  c  I  should/  wrote  the  doctor  to 
Mrs  Thrale,  *  have  been  very  sorry  to  have  missed  any 
of  the  inconveniences,  to  have  had  more  light  or  less 
rain,  for  their  co-operation  crowded  the  scene  and  filled 
the  mind.' 

Crossing  the  Firth,  after  landing  on  Inchkeith,  they 
arrived  at  St  Andrews  which  had  long  been  an  object  of 
interest  to  Johnson.  They  passed  Leuchars,  Dundee, 
and  Aberbrothick.  The  ruins  of  ecclesiastical  magnifi- 
cence would  seem  to  have  touched  a  hidden  chord  in 
Bos  well's  past,  for  we  find  him  on  the  road  talking  of 
the  *  Roman  Catholick  faith,'  and  leading  his  companion 
on  transubstantiation  ;  but  this,  being  '  an  awful  subject, 
I  did  not  then  press  Dr  Johnson  upon  it.'  Montrose 
was  reached,  and  at  the  inn  the  waiter  was  called 
' rascal'  by  the  Rambler  for  putting  sugar  into  the 
lemonade  with  his  fingers,  to  the  delight  of  Bozzy  who 
rallied  him  into  quietness  by  the  assurance  that  the 
landlord  was  an  Englishman.  Monboddo  was  then 
passed,  where  '  the  magnetism  of  his  conversation  drew 
us  out  of  our  way,'  though  the  prompt  action  of  Boswell 
as  agent  in  advance  really  was  the  source  of  their  invita- 
tion. Burnet  was  one  of  the  best  scholars  in  Scotland,  and 
*  Johnson  and  my  lord  spoke  highly  of  Homer.'  All 
his  paradoxes  about  the  superiority  of  the  ancients,  the 
existence  of  men  with  tails,  slavery  and  other  institutions 


96  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

were  vented,  but  all  went  well.  The  decrease  of  learning 
in  England,  which  Johnson  lamented,  was  met  by 
Monboddo's  belief  in  its  extinction  in  Scotland,  but 
Bozzy,  as  the  old  High  School  of  Edinburgh  boy,  put 
in  a  word  for  that  place  of  education  and  brought  him 
to  confess  that  it  did  well. 

The  New  Inn  at  Aberdeen  was  full.  But  the  waiter 
knew  Boswell  by  his  likeness  to  his  father  who  put  up 
here  on  circuit — the  only  portrait,  we  believe,  there  is 
of  Lord  Auchinleck — and  accommodation  was  provided. 
They  visited  King's  College,  where  Boswell  '  stepped 
into  the  chapel  and  looked  at  the  tomb  of  its  founder, 
Bishop  Elphinstone,  of  whom  I  shall  have  occasion  to 
write  in  my  history  of  James  IV.,  the  patron  of  my 
family/  The  freedom  of  the  city  was  conferred  on 
Johnson.  Was  this  an  honour,  or  an  excuse  for  a 
social  glass  among  the  civic  Solons  of  an  unreformed 
corporation?  The  latter  may  be  the  case,  when  we 
reflect  that  none  of  the  four  universities  thought  of 
giving  him  an  honorary  degree,  though  Beattie  at  this 
time  had  received  the  doctorate  in  laws  from  Oxford, 
and  Gray  some  years  before  this  had  declined  the  offer 
from  Aberdeen.  Nor  can  we  forget  the  taunt  of  George 
Colman  the  younger  about  Pangloss  in  his  Heir  at  Law, 
and  his  own  recollection  how,  when  a  lad  at  King's 
College,  he  had  been  c  scarcely  a  week  in  Old  Aberdeen 
when  the  Lord  Provost  of  the  New  Town  invited  me  to 
drink  wine  with  him,  one  evening  in  the  Town  Hall ; ' 
and  presented  him  on  October  8th,  1781,  with  the 
freedom  of  the  city.  No  negative  inference  can  be 
established  from  the  contemporary  notices  in  the 
Aberdeen  Journal  over  the  visit.  Every  paragraph  is 
contemptuous  in  its  tone;  and  till  October  4th  no 
notice  is  taken  of  the  honour,  when  '  a  correspondent 
says  he  is  glad  to  find  that  the  city  of  Aberdeen  has 


JAMES  BOSWELL  97 

presented  Dr  Johnson  with  the  freedom  of  that  place, 
for  he  has  sold  his  freedom  on  this  side  of  the  Tweed 
for  a  pension.'  The  definition  of  oats  in  the  Dictionary 
is  brought  up  against  its  author,  and  Bozzy  is  also 
attacked  in  a  doggerel  epigram  on  his  Corsican  Tour 
and  his  system  of  spelling.  But  the  doctor  easily 
maintained  his  conversational  supremacy  over  his 
academic  hosts,  who  'started  not  a  single  mawkin  for 
us  to  pursue.7 

Ellon,  Slains  Castle,  and  Elgin  were  visited.  They 
passed  Gordon  Castle  at  Fochabers,  drove  over  the 
heath  where  Macbeth  met  the  witches,  '  classic  ground 
to  an  Englishman/  as  the  old  editor  of  Shakespeare 
felt,  and  reached  Nairn,  where  now  they  heard  for  the 
first  time  the  Gaelic  tongue,  —  *  one  of  the  songs  of 
Ossian/  quoth  the  justly  incredulous  doctor, — and  saw 
peat  fires.  At  Fort  George  they  were  welcomed  by  Sir 
Eyre  Coote.  The  old  military  aspirations  of  Bozzy 
flared  up  and  were  soothed :  '  for  a  little  while  I 
fancied  myself  a  military  man,  and  it  pleased  me.7  As 
they  left,  the  commander  reminded  them  of  the  hard- 
ships by  the  way,  in  return  as  Boswell  interposed  for 
the  rough  things  Johnson  had  said  of  Scotland.  '  You 
must  change  your  name,  sir/  said  Sir  Eyre.  'Ay,  to 
Dr  M'Gregor/  replied  Bozzy.  The  notion  of  the  lexico- 
grapher's assuming  the  forbidden  name  of  the  bold 
outlaw,  with  '  his  foot  upon  his  native  heath/  is  rather 
comic,  though  later  on  we  find  him  striding  about  with 
a  target  and  broad  sword,  and  a  bonnet  drawn  over  his 
wig !  Though  both  professed  profuse  addiction  to 
Jacobite  sentiments,  it  is  curious  no  mention  is  made 
of  Culloden.  It  may  be  that  Boswell,  who  some  days 
later  weeps  over  the  battle,  may  have  diplomatically 
avoided  it,  or  it  may  have  been  dark  as  their  chaise 
passed  it,  though  it  is  not  impossible  that  Boswell, 

o 


98  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

who  at  St  Andrews  had  not  known  where  to  look 
for  John  Knox's  grave,  and  has  no  mention  of  Airs- 
moss  where  Cameron  fell  in  his  own  parish  of 
Auchinleck,  was  ignorant  of  the  site.  From  their 
inn  at  Inverness  he  wrote  to  Garrick  gleefully  over  his 
tour  with  Davy's  old  preceptor,  and  then  begged  per- 
mission to  leave  Johnson  for  a  time,  'that  I  might 
run  about  and  pay  some  visits  to  several  good  people,' 
finding  much  satisfaction  in  hearing  every  one  speak 
well  of  his  father. 

On  Monday,  August  30,  they  began  their  equitation  ; 
'  I  would  needs  make  a  word  too.7  They  took  horses 
now,  a  third  carried  his  man  Ritter,  and  a  fourth  their 
portmanteaus.  The  scene  by  Loch  Ness  was  new  to 
the  sage,  and  he  rises  in  his  narrative  a  little  to  it  and 
the  'limpid  waters  beating  their  bank,  and  waving  their 
surface  by  a  gentle  agitation/  Through  Glenshiel,  Glen- 
morison,  Auchnasheal,  they  passed  on  to  the  inn  at 
Glenelg.  They  made  beds  for  themselves  with  fresh 
hay,  and,  like  Wolfe  at  Quebec,  they  had  their  'choice 
of  difficulties ; '  but  the  philosophic  Rambler  maintained 
they  might  have  been  worse  on  the  hillside,  and 
buttoning  himself  up  in  his  greatcoat  he  lay  down, 
while  Boswell  had  his  sheets  spread  on  the  hay, 
and  his  clothes  and  greatcoat  laid  over  him  by  way 
of  blankets. 

Next  day  they  got  into  a  boat  for  Skye,  reaching 
Armidale  before  one.  Here  occurred  one  of  the  dramatic 
episodes  of  the  book.  Sir  Alexander  Macdonald, 
husband  of  BoswelPs  Yorkshire  cousin  Miss  Bosville, 
and  the  host  at  the  masquerade  in  February,  was  on 
his  way  to  Edinburgh,  and  met  them  at  the  house  of 
a  tenant,  '  as  we  believe/  wrote  Johnson  to  Mrs  Thrale, 
'  that  he  might  with  less  reproach  entertain  us  meanly. 
Boswell  was  very  angry,  and  reproached  him  with  his 


JAMES  BOSWELL  99 

improper  parsimony.  Boswell  has  some  thoughts  of 
collecting  the  stones  and  making  a  novel  of  his  life.' 
In  the  first  edition  of  his  book  something  strong  had 
clearly  been  written,  but  it  was  wisely  suppressed  at  the 
last  moment  when  the  book  was  bound,  for  the  new 
pages  are  but  clumsily  pasted  on  the  guard  between 
leaves  166  and  169.  The  first  edition  had  accord- 
ingly this  account,  which  was  even  toned  down  in  the 
next. 

'Instead  of  finding  the  head  of  the  Macdonalds 
surrounded  with  his  clan,  and  a  festive  entertainment, 
we  had  a  small  company  and  cannot  boast  of  our  cheer. 
The  particulars  are  minuted  in  my  journal,  but  I  shall 
not  trouble  the  publick  with  them.  I  shall  mention 
but  one  characteristick  circumstance.  My  shrewd  and 
hearty  friend,  Sir  Thomas  Blackett,  Lady  Macdonald's 
uncle,  who  had  preceded  us  in  a  visit  to  this  chief, 
upon  being  asked  by  him  if  the  punchbowl  then  upon 
the  table  was  not  a  very  handsome  one,  replied,  "  Yes, 
if  it  were  full."  Sir  Alexander,  having  been  an  Eton 
scholar,  Dr  Johnson  had  formed  an  opinion  of  him 
which  was  much  diminished  when  he  beheld  him  in  the 
Isle  of  Sky,  where  we  heard  heavy  complaints  of  rents 
racked,  and  the  people  driven  to  emigration.  Dr 
Johnson  said,  "  it  grieves  me  to  see  the  chief  of  a  great 
clan  appear  to  such  disadvantage.  The  gentleman 
has  talents,  nay,  some  learning ;  but  he  is  totally  unfit 
for  his  situation.  Sir,  the  Highland  chiefs  should  not 
be  allowed  to  go  further  south  than  Aberdeen."  I 
meditated  an  escape  from  this  the  very  next  day,  but 
Dr  Johnson  resolved  that  we  should  weather  it  out  till 
Monday.' 

Next  day  being  Sunday  Bozzy's  spirits  were  cheered 
by  the  climate  and  the  weather,  but  '  had  I  not  had  Dr 
Johnson  to  contemplate,  I  should  have  been  sunk  into 


ioo  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

dejection,  but  his  firmness  supported  me.  I  looked  at 
him  as  a  man  whose  head  is  turning  giddy  at  sea  looks 
at  a  rock/  Everywhere  they  met  signs  of  the  parting 
of  the  ways  in  the  Highlands.  The  old  days  of  feudal 
power  were  merging  in  the  industrial,  the  chiefs  were 
now  landlords  and  exacting  ones.  Emigration  was  rife, 
and  the  pages  of  the  Scots  Magazine  of  the  time  dwell 
much  on  this.  A  month  before,  four  hundred  men  had 
left  Strathglass  and  Glengarry ;  in  June  eight  hundred 
had  sailed  from  Stornoway ;  Lochaber  sent  four  hundred, 
'the  finest  set  of  fellows  in  the  Highlands,  carrying 
;£6ooo  in  ready  cash  with  them.  The  extravagant  rents 
exacted  by  the  landlords  is  the  sole  cause  given  for  this 
emigration  which  seems  to  be  only  in  its  infancy/  The 
high  price  of  provisions  and  the  decrease  of  the  linen 
trade  in  the  north  of  Ireland  sent  eight  hundred  this 
year  from  Stromness,  when  we  find  the  linen  dealers 
thanking  BoswelPs  old  rival,  as  he  supposed,  with  Miss 
Blair,  Sir  Alexander  Gilmour,  M.P.  for  Midlothian,  for 
his  efforts  at  providing  better  legislation. 

Rasay  is  one  of  the  happiest  descriptions  in  the  tour. 
*  This/  said  Johnson,  '  is  truly  the  patriarchal  life ;  this 
is  what  we  came  to  find.'  They  heard  from  home  and 
had  letters.  At  Kingsburgh  they  were  welcomed  by  the 
lady  of  the  house,  '  the  celebrated  Miss  Flora  Macdonald, 
a  little  woman  of  genteel  appearance ;  and  uncommonly 
mild  and  well-bred.'  *  I  was  in  a  cordial  humour,  and 
promoted  a  cheerful  glass.  Honest  Mr  M'Queen 
observed  that  I  was  in  high  glee,  "  my  governor  being 
gone  to  bed."  .  .  .  The  room  where  we  lay  was  a 
celebrated  one.  Dr  Johnson's  bed  was  the  very  bed  in 
which  the  grandson  of  the  unfortunate  King  James  the 
Second  lay,  on  one  of  the  nights  after  the  failure  of  his  ' 
rash  attempt  in  1745-6.  To  see  Dr  Samuel  Johnson 
lying  in  that  bed,  in  the  Isle  of  Sky,  in  the  house  of 


JAMES  BOSWELL  101 

Miss  Flora  Macdonald,  struck  me  with  such  a  group  of 
ideas  as  it  is  not  easy  for  words  to  describe,  as  they 
passed  through  the  mind.  The  room  was  decorated 
with  a  great  variety  of  maps  and  prints.  Among  others, 
was  Hogarth's  print  of  Wilkes  grinning,  with  a  cap  of 
liberty  on  a  pole  by  him/  Certainly  Bozzy  had  never 
thought  of  finding  a  remembrance  of  his  '  classic  friend ' 
in  such  circumstances. 

Dunvegan  and  the  castle  of  the  Macleods  received 
them  in  hospitable  style.  *  Boswell,'  said  Johnson,  in 
allusion  to  Sir  Alexander's  stinted  ways,  c  we  came  in  at 
the  wrong  end  of  the  island  ; '  the  memories  of  their  visit 
had  not  been  forgotten  when  Scott  was  there  on  his 
Lighthouse  Tour  in  1814.  The  Rambler  '  had  tasted 
lotus,  and  was  in  danger  of  forgetting  he  was  ever  to 
depart.' 

Landing  at  Strolimus,  they  proceeded  to  Corricha- 
tachin,  'with  but  a  single  star  to  light  us  on  our  way.' 
There  took  place  the  scene  that,  though  familiar,  must 
be  given  in  the  writer's  own  words.  A  man  who,  for 
artistic  setting  and  colour,  could  write  it  deliberately 
down  even  to  his  own  disadvantage,  and  who  could 
appeal  to  serious  critics  and  readers  of  discernment  and 
taste  against  the  objections  which  he  saw  himself  would 
be  raised  from  the  misinterpretation  of  others,  is  a  figure 
not  to  be  met  with  every  day  in  literature. 

*  Dr  Johnson  went  to  bed  soon.  When  one  bowl  of  punch  was 
finished,  I  rose,  and  was  near  the  door,  on  my  way  upstairs  to  bed ; 
but  Corrichatachin  said,  it  was  the  first  time  Col  had  been  in  his 
house,  and  he  should  have  his  bowl ;  and  would  not  I  join  in  drink- 
ing it?  The  heartiness  of  my  honest  landlord,  and  the  desire  of 
doing  social  honour  to  our  very  obliging  conductor,  induced  me  to 
sit  down  again.  Col's  bowl  was  finished ;  and  by  that  time  we 
were  well  warmed.  A  third  bowl  was  soon  made,  and  that  too  was 
finished.  We  were  cordial,  and  merry  to  a  high  degree ;  but  of 


102  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

what  passed  I  have  no  recollection,  with  any  accuracy.  I  remember 
calling  Corrichatachin  by  the  familiar  appellation  of  Corri  which 
his  friends  do.  A  fourth  bowl  was  made,  by  which  time  Col,  and 
young  M'Kinnon,  Corrichatachin's  son,  slipped  away  to  bed.  I 
continued  a  little  time  with  Corri  and  Knockow  ;  but  at  last  I  left 
them.  It  was  near  five  in  the  morning  when  I  got  to  bed.  Sunday -, 
September  26.  I  awaked  at  noon  with  a  severe  head-ach.  I  was 
much  vexed  that  I  should  have  been  guilty  of  such  a  riot,  and  afraid 
of  a  reproof  from  Dr  Johnson,  I  thought  it  very  inconsistent  with 
that  conduct  which  I  ought  to  maintain,  while  the  companion  of  the 
Rambler.  About  one  he  came  into  my  room,  and  accosted  me, 
"  What,  drunk  yet  ?"  His  tone  of  voice  was  not  that  of  severe  upbraid- 
ing ;  so  I  was  relieved  a  little.  "  Sir,"  (said  I),  "  they  kept  me  up." 
He  answered,  "No,  you  kept  them  up,  you  drunken  dog  :  " — this 
he  said  with  good-humoured  English  pleasantry.  Soon  afterwards, 
Corrichatachin,  Col,  and  other  friends  assembled  round  my  bed. 
Corri  had  a  brandy  bottle  and  glass  with  him,  and  insisted  I  should 
take  a  dram.  u  Ay,"  said  Dr  Johnson,  "  fill  him  drunk  again.  Do 
it  in  the  morning,  that  we  may  laugh  at  him  all  day.  It  is  a  poor 
thing  for  a  fellow  to  get  drunk  at  night,  and  skulk  to  bed,  and  let 
his  friends  have  no  sport."  Finding  him  thus  jocular,  I  became  quite 
easy  ;  and  when  I  offered  to  get  up,  he  very  good  naturedly  said, 
"  You  need  be  in  no  such  hurry  now. "  I  took  my  host's  advice,  and 
drank  some  brandy,  which  I  found  an  effectual  cure  for  my  head- 
ach.  When  I  rose,  I  went  into  Dr  Johnson's  room,  and  taking  up 
Mrs  M'Kinnon's  Prayer-Book,  I  opened  it  at  the  twentieth  Sunday 
after  Trinity,  in  the  epistle  for  which  I  read,  "  And  be  not  drunk 
with  wine,  wherein  there  is  excess."  Some  would  have  taken  this 
as  a  divine  interposition.1 

Such  is  the  extraordinary  confession.  St  Augustine, 
Rousseau,  De  Quincey,  have  not  quite  equalled  this. 
He  found  it  had  been  made  the  subject  of  serious  criti- 
cism and  ludicrous  banter.  But  his  one  object,  as  he 
tells  *  serious  criticks,'  has  been  to  delineate  Johnson's 
character,  and  for  this  purpose  he  appeals  from  Philip 
drunk  to  Philip  sober,  and  to  the  approbation  of  the 
discerning  reader.  Later  on,  he  has  laid  the  flattering 


JAMES  BOSWELL  io$ 

unction  to  his  heart,  and  has  extracted  comfort  from  the 
soul  of  things  evil.  He  felt  comfortable,  and  '  I  then 
thought  that  my  last  night's  riot  was  no  more  than 
such  a  social  excess  as  may  happen  without  much 
moral  blame;  and  recollected  that  some  physicians 
maintained,  that  a  fever  produced  by  it  was,  upon  the 
whole,  good  for  health  :  so  different  are  our  reflections 
on  the  same  subject,  at  different  periods;  and  such 
the  excuses  with  which  we  palliate  what  we  know  to 
be  wrong.' 

Leaving  Skye,  they  ran  before  the  wind  to  Col. 

*  It  was  very  dark,  and  there  was  a  heavy  and  incessant  rain. 
The  sparks  of  the  burning  peat  flew  so  much  about,  that  I  dreaded 
the  vessel  might  take  fire.  Then  as  Col  was  a  sportsman,  and  had 
powder  on  board,  I  figured  that  we  might  be  blown  up.  Our 
vessel  often  lay  so  much  on  one  side,  that  I  trembled  lest  she  should 
be  overset,  and  indeed  they  told  me  afterwards  that  they  had  run 
her  sometimes  to  within  an  inch  of  the  water,  so  anxious  were  they 
to  make  what  haste  they  could  before  the  night  should  be  worse. 
I  now  saw  what  I  never  saw  before,  a  prodigious  sea,  with  immense 
billows  coming  upon  a  vessel,  so  that  it  seemed  hardly  possible  to 
escape.  I  am  glad  I  have  seen  it  once.  I  endeavoured  to  compose 
my  mind  ;  when  I  thought  of  those  who  were  dearest  to  me,  and 
would  suffer  severely,  should  I  be  lost,  I  upbraided  myself.  Piety 
afforded  me  comfort ;  yet  I  was  disturbed  by  the  objections  that 
have  been  made  against  a  particular  providence,  and  by  the  argu- 
ments of  those  who  maintain  that  it  is  in  vain  to  hope  that  the 
petitions  of  an  individual,  or  even  of  congregations,  can  have  any 
influence  with  the  Deity.  I  asked  Col  with  much  earnestness  what 
I  could  do.  He  with  a  happy  readiness  put  into  my  hand  a  rope, 
which  was  fixed  to  the  top  of  one  of  the  masts,  and  told  me  to  hold 
it  till  he  bade  me  pull.  If  I  had  considered  the  matter,  I  might 
have  seen  that  this  could  not  be  of  the  slightest  service ;  but  his 
object  was  to  keep  me  out  of  the  way.  .  .  .  Thus  did  I  stand  firm 
to  my  post,  while  the  wind  and  rain  beat  upon  me,  always  expecting 
a  call  to  pull  my  rope.  .  .  .  They  spied  the  harbour  of  Lochiern, 
and  Col  cried,  "Thank  God,  we  are  safe  1"  Dr  Johnson  had  all 


FAMOUS  SCOTS 

this  time  been  quiet  and  unconcerned.  He  had  lain  down  on  one 
of  the  beds,  and  having  got  free  from  sickness,  was  satisfied.  The 
truth  is,  he  knew  nothing  of  the  danger  we  were  in.  Once  he  asked 
whither  we  were  going ;  upon  being  told  that  it  was  not  certain 
whether  to  Mull  or  Col,  he  cried,  "  Col  for  my  money  !  "  I  now 
went  down  to  visit  him.  He  was  lying  in  philosophick  tranquillity, 
with  a  greyhound  of  CoFs  at  his  back  keeping  him  warm/ 

Mull,  Tobermory,  Ulva's  Isle,  and  Inch  Kenneth 
followed.  Then  lona, — 'the  sacred  place  which  as 
long  as  I  can  remember,  I  had  thought  on  with  venera- 
tion.' The  two  friends,  as  they  landed  on  the  island, 
*  cordially  embraced/  as  they  had  done  in  the  White 
Horse  at  Edinburgh,  and  the  mark  of  feeling  is  a  note 
that  we  are  yet  with  them  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
They  lay  in  a  bam  with  a  portmanteau  for  a  pillow,  and 
1  when  I  awaked  in  the  morning  and  looked  round  me, 
I  could  not  help  smiling  at  the  idea  of  the  chief  of  the 
Macleans,  the  great  English  moralist,  and  myself  lying 
thus  extended  in  such  a  situation.'  The  old  Boswell 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  days  appears  at  this  time. 
'  Boswell,'  writes  Johnson  to  Mrs  Thrale,  '  who  is  very 
pious  went  into  the  chapel  at  night  to  perform  his 
devotions,  but  came  back  in  haste  for  fear  of  spectres.' 
Second  sight  was  often  in  their  thoughts  and  conversa- 
tion on  their  tour ;  at  the  club  Colman  had  jocularly 
to  bid  Boswell  '  cork  it  up '  when  he  was  too  full  of  his 
belief  on  the  point.  His  fear  of  ghosts  reminds  one 
of  Pepys  in  the  year  of  the  great  plague,  as  he  went 
through  the  graveyard  of  the  church,  with  the  bodies 
buried  thick  and  high,  '  frighted  and  much  troubled.' 

*  I  left  him,'  says  Boswell  himself,  '  and  Sir  Allan  at 
breakfast  in  our  barn,  and  stole  back  again  to  the 
cathedral,  to  indulge  in  solitude  and  devout  meditation. 
When  contemplating  the  venerable  ruins,  /  reflected 
with  much  satisfaction,  that  the  solemn  scenes  of  piety 


JAMES  BOSWELL  105 

never  lose  their  sanctity  and  influence,  though  the  cares 
and  follies  of  life  may  prevent  us  from  visiting  them. 
...  I  hoped  that,  ever  after  having  been  in  this 
holy  place,  I  should  maintain  an  exemplary  conduct. 
One  has  a  strange  propensity  to  fix  upon  some  point 
of  time  from  whence  a  better  course  of  life  may  begin.' 
This  is  a  revelation  of  the  inner  Boswell.  On  the  eve 
of  the  appearance  of  the  Tour  in  Corsica^  he  had  written 
to  Temple,  about  c  fixing  some  period  for  my  perfection 
as  far  as  possible.  Let  it  be  when  my  account  of 
Corsica  is  finished.  I  shall  then  have  a  character  to 
support/  On  landing  at  Rasay,  he  noticed  the  remains 
of  a  cross  on  the  rock,  '  which  had  to  me  a  pleasing 
vestige  of  religion/  and  he  'could  not  but  value  the 
family  seat  more  for  having  even  the  ruins  of  a  chapel 
close  to  it.  There  was  something  comforting  in  the 
thought  of  being  so  near  a  piece  of  consecrated  ground.' 
Oban  received  them  with  a  tolerable  inn.  They 
were  again  on  the  mainland,  and  found  papers  with 
conjectures  as  to  their  motions  in  the  islands.  Next 
day  they  spent  at  Inverary.  The  castle  of  the  Duke  of 
Argyll  was  near,  and  now,  for  the  first  time  on  the  tour, 
the  indefatigable  agent  in  advance  was  completely  non- 
plussed. The  spectre  of  the  great  Douglas  Trial  loomed 
large  in  the  eyes  of  the  pamphleteer  and  the  hero  of  the 
riot.  He  had  reason,  he  says,  to  fear  hostile  reprisals 
on  the  part  of  the  Duchess,  who  had  been  Duchess  of 
Hamilton  and  mother  of  the  rival  claimant,  before  she 
had  become  the  wife  of  John,  fifth  Duke  of  Argyll.  It 
is  from  this  scene  and  from  the  Stratford  Jubilee  fiasco 
that  the  general  reader  draws  his  picture  of  poor  Bozzy, 
and  the  belief  remains  that  James  Boswell  was  a  pushing 
and  forward  interloper,  half  mountebank  and  half  show- 
man. Read  in  the  original,  as  a  revelation  of  the 
writer's  character,  the  very  reverse  is  the  impression; 


106  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

he  is  there  presented  not  in  any  ludicrous  light  but 
rather  in  a  good-humoured  and  fussy  way.  He  met  his 
friend  the  Rev.  John  Macaulay,  one  of  the  ministers  of 
Inverary,  who  accompanied  them  to  the  castle,  where 
Boswell  presented  the  doctor  to  the  Duke.  '  I  shall 
never  forget,'  quaintly  adds  the  chronicler,  '  the  impres- 
sion made  upon  my  fancy  by  some  of  the  ladies'  maids 
tripping  about  in  neat  morning  dresses.  After  seeing  for 
a  long  time  little  but  rusticity,  their  lively  manner,  and 
gay  inviting  appearance,  pleased  me  so  much,  that  I 
thought,  for  a  moment,  I  could  have  been  a  knight- 
errant  for  them.'  This  grandfather  of  the  historian 
and  essayist,  the  man  who  has  dealt  the  heaviest  blow 
to  the  reputation  of  poor  Bozzy,  was  to  encounter 
some  warm  retorts  from  the  Rambler  like  his  brother, 
Macaulay's  grand-uncle,  the  minister  at  Calder.  Mr 
Trevelyan  is  eager  for  the  good  name  of  his  family,  and 
finds  it  impossible  to  suppress  a  wish  that  the  great 
talker  had  been  there  to  avenge  them.  It  may  not 
be  quite  impossible  that,  mingling  with  the  brilliant 
essayist's  ill-will  to  the  politics  of  the  travellers,  there 
was  an  unconscious  strain  of  resentment  at  the  con- 
temptuous way  in  which  his  relations  had  been  tossed 
by  the  doctor,  and  that  Bozzy's  own  subsequent  denun- 
ciations of  the  abolitionists  and  the  slave  trade  had 
edged  the  memories  in  the  mind  of  the  son  of  Zachary 
Macaulay.  Be  this  as  it  may,  for  this  scene  Macaulay 
has  a  keen  eye,  and  as  much  of  his  colour  is  derived 
from  it,  it  is  but  right  that  in  some  abridged  form  the 
incident  be  set  down  here  in  BoswelPs  own  words — 

1 1  went  to  the  castle  just  about  the  time  when  I  supposed  the 
ladies  would  be  retired  from  dinner.  I  sent  in  my  name ;  and, 
being  shewn  in,  found  the  amiable  Duke  sitting  at  the  head  of  his 
table  with  several  gentlemen.  I  was  most  politely  received,  and 
gave  his  grace  some  particulars  of  the  curious  journey  which  I  had 


JAMES  BOSWELL  107 

been  making  with  Dr  Johnson.  ...  As  I  was  going  away,  the 
Duke  said,  * '  Mr  Eoswell,  won't  you  have  some  tea  ?  "  I  thought 
it  best  to  get  over  the  meeting  with  the  Duchess  this  night ;  so 
respectfully  agreed.  I  was  conducted  to  the  drawing-room  by  the 
Duke,  who  announced  my  name  ;  but  the  duchess,  who  was  sitting 
with  her  daughter,  Lady  Betty  Hamilton,  and  some  other  ladies, 
took  not  the  least  notice  of  me.  I  should  have  been  mortified  at 
being  thus  coldly  received,  had  I  not  been  consoled  by  the  obliging 
attention  of  the  Duke. 

'  Monday,  October  25.  I  presented  Dr  Johnson  to  the  Duke  of 
Argyll.  .  .  .  the  duke  placed  Dr  Johnson  next  himself  at  table. 
I  was  in  fine  spirits  ;  and  though  sensible  of  not  being  in  favour 
with  the  duchess,  I  was  not  in  the  least  disconcerted,  and  offered 
her  grace  some  of  the  dish  that  was  before  me.  It  must  be  owned 
that  I  was  in  the  right  to  be  quite  unconcerned,  if  I  could.  I  was 
the  Duke  of  Argyll's  guest ;  and  I  had  no  reason  to  suppose  that 
he  adopted  the  prejudices  and  resentments  of  the  Duchess  of 
Hamilton. 

*  I  knew  it  was  the  rule  of  modern  high  life  not  to  drink  to  any- 
body ;  but,  that  I  might  have  the  satisfaction  for  once  to  look  the 
duchess  in  the  face,  with  a  glass  in  my  hand,  I  with  a  respectful  air 
addressed  her, — "  My  Lady  Duchess,  I  have  the  honour  to  drink 
your  grace's  good  health."  I  repeated  the  words  audibly,  and  with 
a  steady  countenance.  This  was,  perhaps,  rather  too  much ;  but 
some  allowance  must  be  made  for  human  feelings.  I  made  some 
remark  that  seemed  to  imply  a  belief  in  second  sight.  The  duchess 
said,  "  I  fancy  you  will  be  a  methodist"  This  was  the  only  sen- 
tence her  grace  deigned  to  utter  to  me  ;  and  I  take  it  for  granted, 
she  thought  it  a  good  hit  on  my  credulity  in  the  Douglas  Cause. 

'We  went  to  tea.  The  duke  and  I  walked  up  and  down  the 
drawing-room,  conversing.  The  duchess  still  continued  to  shew 
the  same  marked  coldness  for  me  ;  for  which,  though  I  suffered 
from  it,  I  made  every  allowance,  considering  the  very  warm  part 
that  I  had  taken  for  Douglas,  in  the  cause  in  which  she  thought 
her  son  deeply  interested.  Had  not  her  grace  discovered  some 
displeasure  towards  me,  I  should  have  suspected  her  of  insensibility 
or  dissimulation.  Her  grace  made  Dr  Johnson  come  and  sit  by 
her,  and  asked  him  why  he  made  his  journey  so  late  in  the  year. 
"Why,  madam  (said  he),  you  know  Mr  Boswell  must  attend  the 


io8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Court  of  Session,  and  it  does  not  rise  till  the  1 2th  of  August." 
She  said,  with  some  sharpness,  "  I  know  nothing  vi  Mr  Boswell." 
Poor  Lady  Lucy  Douglas,  to  whom  I  mentioned  this,  observed, 
"  She  knew  too  mtich  of  Mr  Boswell."  I  shall  make  no  remark  on 
her  grace's  speech,  etc.,  etc.* 

In  all  this  scene  it  will  be  confessed  there  is  nothing 
but  rudeness  on  the  part  of  the  duchess,  one  of  the 
beautiful  Gunnings,  intentional  or  otherwise,  while  the 
kindly  touches  on  BoswelPs  part,  his  allowance  for  her 
supposed  feelings  over  the  trial,  and  his  determination, 
for  once,  to  look  a  duchess  in  the  face,  are  admirable. 
Bozzy  was  by  birth  a  gentleman,  and  there  is  not  the 
slightest  indication  here  of  any  want  of  breeding  or  taste 
on  his  side. 

At  Dumbarton,  steep  as  is  the  incline,  Johnson  as- 
cended it.  The  Saraceris  Head,  which  had  welcomed 
Paoli  before  now,  received  the  travellers.  There  was  now 
no  more  sullen  fuel  or  peat.  '  Here  am  I,'  soliloquized 
the  Rambler,  with  a  leg  upon  each  side  of  the  grate, 
'an  Englishman,  sitting  by  a  coal  fire.' 

'  Jamie's  aff  the  hooks  noo ; '  said  the  old  laird,  as 
they  drew  near  Auchinleck,  'he's  bringing  doon  an 
auld  dominie.'  Boswell  begged  of  his  companion  to 
avoid  three  topics  of  discourse  on  which  he  knew  his 
father  had  fixed  opinions — Whiggism,  Presbyterianism, 
and  Sir  John  Pringle.  For  a  time  all  went  well.  They 
walked  about  'the  romantick  groves  of  my  ancestors,' 
and  Bozzy  discoursed  on  the  antiquity  and  honourable 
alliances  of  the  family,  and  on  the  merits  of  its  founder, 
Thomas,  who  fell  with  King  James  at  Flodden.  But 
the  storm  broke,  over  the  judge's  collection  of  medals, 
where  that  of  Oliver  Cromwell  brought  up  Charles  the 
First  and  Episcopacy.  All  must  regret  that  the  writer's 
filial  feelings  withheld  the  'interesting  scene  in  this 
dramatick  sketch.'  It  is  the  one  lacuna  in  the  book. 


JAMES  BOSWELL  109 

Sir  John  Pringle,  as  the  middle  term  in  the  debate, 
came  off  without  a  bruise,  but  the  honours  lay  with 
Lord  Auchinleck.  The  man  whose  f  Scots  strength  of 
sarcasm '  could  retort  on  Johnson,  that  Cromwell  was 
a  man  that  let  kings  know  they  '  had  a  lith  in  their 
neck/  was  likely  to  open  new  ideas  to  the  doctor, 
whose  political  opinions  could  not  rank  higher  than 
prejudices.  'Thus  they  parted,'  says  the  son,  after 
his  father  had,  with  his  dignified  courtesy,  seen  Johnson 
into  the  postchaise;  'they  are  now  in  a  happier  state 
of  existence,  in  a  place  where  there  is  no  room  for 
Whiggism?  '  I  have  always  said/  the  doctor  main- 
tained, '  the  first  Whig  was  the  Devil ! ' 

Edinburgh  was  reached  on  November  Qth.  Eighty- 
three  days  had  passed  since  they  left  it,  and  for  five 
weeks  no  news  of  them  had  been  heard.  Writing  from 
London,  on  his  arrival,  Johnson  said,  '  I  came  home 
last  night,  without  any  incommodity,  danger,  or  weari- 
ness, and  am  ready  to  begin  a  new  journey.  I  know 
Mrs  Boswell  wished  me  well  to  go.'  The  irregular 
hours  of  her  guest,  and  his  habit  of  turning  the  candles 
downward  when  they  did  not  burn  brightly,  letting  the 
wax  run  upon  the  carpet,  had  not  been  quite  to  the  taste 
of  the  hostess,  who  resented,  '  what  was  very  natural  to 
a  female  mind/  the  influence  he  possessed  over  the 
actions  of  her  husband. 

We  may  well  call  this  tour  a  spirited  one,  as  Boswell 
had  styled  his  own  Corsican  expedition.  No  better 
book  of  travels  in  Scotland  has  ever  been  written  than 
Boswell's  Journal  of  a  Tour  to  the  Hebrides.  The 
accuracy  of  his  description,  his  eye  for  scenes  and 
dramatic  effects,  have  all  been  fully  borne  witness  to 
by  those  who  have  followed  in  their  track,  and  the  fact 
of  the  book  being  day  by  day  read  by  Johnson,  during  its 
preparation,  gives  it  an  additional  value  from  the  perfect 


no  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

veracity  of  its  contents — '  as  I  have  resolved  that  the 
very  journal  which  Dr  Johnson  read  shall  be  presented 
to  the  publick,  I  will  not  expand  the  text  in  any  con- 
siderable degree.'  If  the  way  in  which  the  Rambler 
roughed  it,  '  laughing  to  think  of  myself  roving  among 
the  Hebrides  at  sixty,  and  wondering  where  I  shall  rove 
at  four  score,'  is  admirable,  none  the  less  so  is  Bozzy's 
imperturbable  good  humour.  *  It  is  very  convenient  to 
travel  with  him,'  writes  his  companion  from  Auchinleck 
to  Mrs  Thrale,  '  for  there  is  no  house  where  he  is  not 
received  with  kindness  and  respect.  He  has  better 
faculties  than  I  had  imagined ;  more  justness  of  dis- 
cernment and  more  fecundity  of  images.'  They  had 
hoped  to  go  sailing  from  island  to  island,  and  had  not 
reckoned  with  what  Scott,  who  wonders  they  were  not 
drowned,  calls  the  proverbial  carelessness  of  Hebridean 
boatmen.  They  really  had  come  two  months  too 
late.  But  BoswelPs  attention  to  the  old  man 
smoothed  all  difficulties, — 'looking  on  the  tour  as  a 
co-partnership  between  Dr  Johnson  and  myself,'  he  did 
his  part  faithfully,  dancing  reels,  singing  songs,  and 
airing  the  scraps  of  Gaelic  he  picked  up,  thinking  all 
this  better  than  '  to  play  the  abstract  scholar.' 

Johnson's  account  of  the  journey  is  an  able  perform- 
ance, and  is  written  with  a  lighter  touch  and  grace  than 
is  to  be  found  in  his  early  works.  One  passage  from  it 
has  become  famous, — his  description  of  lona.  'The 
man  whose  patriotism  would  not  gain  force  upon  the 
plain  of  Marathon,  or  whose  piety  would  not  grow 
warmer  among  the  ruins  of  lona,'  rivals  Macaulay's 
New  Zealander  as  a  stock  quotation,  and  the  whole 
book  is  not  without  incisive  touches.  But  it  is  com- 
pletely eclipsed  by  the  Journal  of  Boswell.  From  start 
to  finish  there  is  not  a  dull  page,  and  the  literary 
polish  is,  we  venture  to  think,  of  a  higher  kind  than  is 


JAMES  BOSWELL  in 

seen  in  the  Life.  The  artistic  opening,  and  the  group- 
ing of  the  characters,  together  with  the  wealth  of 
archaeological  and  historical  information,  the  tripping 
style  and  sustained  interest,  all  render  this  book  of 
Boswell's  a  masterpiece.  Johnson's  account,  published 
in  1775,  to°k  ten  years  to  reach  a  second  edition. 
BoswelFs  appeared  in  September,  1785;  and  by 
December  20  the  issue  was  exhausted,  a  third  followed 
on  August  15,  1786,  and  the  next  year  saw  a  German 
translation  issued  at  Lubeck.  There  had  been  grave 
indiscretions,  lack  of  reticence,  and  other  faults  in  the 
book.  Caricatures  were  rife.  Revising  for  the  Second 
Edition  shewed  Sir  Alexander  Macdonald  seizing  the 
author  by  the  throat,  and  pointing  with  his  stick  to  the 
open  book,  where  two  leaves  are  marked  as  torn  out. 
But  Boswell,  in  The  Gentlemaris  Magazine  for  March 
1786,  asserts  that  no  such  applications  or  threats  had 
been  made.  The  results,  however,  may  have  added  to 
the  writer's  unpopularity,  as  Lord  Houghton  suggests, 
at  the  Edinburgh  bar,  through  the  answers,  replies,  and 
other  rejoinders  to  the  strictures  of  Johnson,  for  which 
Boswell,  as  the  pioneer  and  the  introducer  of  the 
stranger,  'the  chiel  among  them  takin'  notes/  may  in 
Edinburgh  society  have  been  held  as  mainly  responsible. 
To  Johnson,  the  memories  of  the  tour — the  lone 
shieling  and  the  misty  island — were  a  source  of  pleasing 
recollection.  Taken  earlier,  it  would  have  removed 
many  of  his  insular  prejudices  by  wider  survey  and 
more  varied  conversation.  'The  expedition  to  the 
Hebrides,'  he  wrote  to  Boswell  some  years  after,  'was 
the  most  pleasant  journey  I  ever  made ; '  and  two  years 
later,  after  restless  and  tedious  nights,  he  is  found 
reverting  to  it  and  recalling  the  best  night  he  had  had 
these  twenty  years  back,  at  Fort  Augustus.  Yet  all 
through  September  they  had  not  more  than  a  day  and  a 


ii2  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

half  of  really  good  weather,  and  but  the  same  during 
October.  Out  of  such  slight  materials  and  uncomfort- 
able surroundings  has  Boswell  produced  a  masterpiece 
of  descriptive  writing.  The  memory  of  Johnson  has 
lingered  where  that  of  the  Jacobite  Pretender  has  well- 
nigh  completely  passed  away.  Mr  Gladstone,  proposing 
a  Parliamentary  vote  of  thanks  to  Lord  Napier  for 
1  having  planted  the  Standard  of  St  George  upon  the 
mountains  of  Rasselas;'  Sir  Robert  Peel,  quoting,  in  his 
address  to  Glasgow  University  as  Lord  Rector,  Johnson's 
description  of  lona;  Sir  Walter  Scott  finding  in  Skye 
that  he  and  his  friends  had  in  their  memories,  as  the 
one  typical  association  of  the  island,  the  ode  to  Mrs 
Thrale,  all  combine  to  shew  the  abiding  interest  attach- 
ing to  the  Rambler  even  in  Abyssinia  and  to  his  foot- 
steps in  Scotland. 


CHAPTER  VI 

EDINBURGH  LIFE DEATH  OF  JOHNSON.       1773-1784 

*  My  father  used  to  protest  I  was  born  to  be  a  strolling  pedlar. ' — 
SIR  WALTER  SCOTT — Autobiography. 

1  You  have  done  Auchinleck  much  honour  and  have, 
I  hope,  overcome  my  father  who  has  never  forgiven 
your  warmth  for  monarchy  and  episcopacy.  I  am 
anxious  to  see  how  your  pages  will  operate  on  him.' 
Boswell  had  good  grounds  for  thus  expressing  himself  to 
Johnson  over  the  publication  of  the  latter's  book.  He 
had  not  long,  it  would  seem,  to  wait  for  the  breaking  of 
the  storm,  as  we  find  him  writing  to  Temple  in  ominous 
language.  '  My  father/  he  says,  '  is  most  unhappily 
dissatisfied  with  me.  He  harps  on  my  going  over  Scot- 
land with  a  brute  (think  how  shockingly  erroneous !) 
and  wandering,  or  some  such  phrase,  to  London.  I 
always  dread  his  making  some  bad  settlement.'  Then 
the  old  judge  would  grimly  relate  how  Lord  Crichton, 
son  of  the  Earl  of  Dumfries,  would  go  to  Edinburgh, 
and  how,  when  he  was  carried  back  to  the  family  vault, 
the  Earl,  as  he  saw  the  hearse  from  the  window,  had 
said,  *  Ay,  ay,  Charles,  thou  went  without  an  errand :  I 
think  thou  hast  got  one  to  bring  thee  back  again.' 

But  had  the  son  chosen  to  be  quite  candid  here,  we 
should  see  how  just  a  cause  the  father  had  for  his 
displeasure.  In  the  spring  of  1774,  he  had  written  to 

H  "3 


FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Johnson  suggesting  a  run  up  to  London,  expressing  the 
peculiar  satisfaction  which  he  felt  in  celebrating  Easter 
at  St  Paul's,  which  to  his  fancy  was  like  going  up  to 
Jerusalem  at  the  feast  of  the  Passover.  The  doctor  was 
wisely  deaf  to  this  subtle  appeal.  'Edinburgh/  said 
he,  'is  not  yet  exhausted/  and  reminded  him  that  his 
wife,  having  permitted  him  last  year  to  ramble,  had 
now  a  claim  upon  him  at  home,  while  to  come  to  lona  or 
to  Jerusalem  could  not  be  necessary,  though  useful. 
Next  year,  however,  Boswell  was  in  London,  '  quite  in  my 
old  humour/  as  he  tells  Temple,  arguing  with  him  for 
concubinage  and  the  plurality  of  the  patriarchs,  from  all 
which  we  may  see  that  the  plea  urged  to  Johnson  for 
the  visit  was  to  be  taken  in  a  lax  sense  by  Boswell,  who 
made  his  chief  excuse  out  of  some  business  at  the  bai 
of  the  House  over  an  election  petition  in  Clackmannan. 
He  waited  on  Temple  in  Devon  and  shocked  his  host 
by  his  inebriety,  but  '  under  a  solemn  yew  tree '  he  had 
vowed  reformation.  But  his  return  to  town,  if  it  '  ex- 
alted him  in  piety '  at  St  Paul's,  seems  to  have  led  but 
to  fresh  dissipation.  He  hints  at  '  Asiatic  multiplicity/ 
but  this  is  only  when  he  has  taken  too  much  claret. 
The  good  resolutions  at  lona  and  the  influence  of  the 
ruins  had  passed  away,  the  trip  is  extended  to  two 
months,  and  he  frets  irritably  over  his  old  friend  Henry 
Dundas's  election  as  King's  Advocate, — '  to  be  sure  he 
has  strong  parts,  but  he  is  a  coarse  unlettered  dog.' 
Harry  Dundas  at  least  was  never  found  philandering  as 
we  find  Bozzy  on  this  occasion,  where  the  mixture  of 
religion  and  flirtation  is  so  confusing.  '  After  breakfast- 
ing with  Paoli/  he  writes  before  leaving  for  the  north, 
'and  worshipping  at  St  Paul's,  I  dined  tite-a-tite  with 
my  charming  Mrs  Stuart,  of  whom  you  have  read  in  my 
Journal.  We  dined  in  all  the  elegance  of  two  courses 
and  a  dessert,  with  dumb  waiters,  except  when  the  second 


JAMES  BOSWELL  115 

course  and  the  dessert  were  served.  We  talked  with 
unreserved  freedom,  as  we  had  nothing  to  fear.  We 
were  philosophical,  upon  honour — not  deep,  but  feeling, 
we  were  pious ;  we  drank  tea  and  bid  each  other  adieu 
as  finely  as  romance  paints.  She  is  my  wife's  dearest 
friend,  so  you  see  how  beautiful  our  intimacy  is.'  But 
from  Johnson's  letter  to  Mrs  Thrale  we  see  looming 
ahead  a  crisis.  '  He  got  two  and  forty  guineas  in  fees 
while  he  was  here.  He  has  by  his  wife 's  persuasion  and 
mine  taken  down  a  present  for  his  mother-in-law/ — an 
error,  doubtless,  for  'stepmother/  He  had  entered 
himself  this  time  at  the  Temple,  and  Johnson  was  his 
bond.  He  left  to  be  in  time  for  practice  before  the 
General  Assembly,  finding  '  something  low  and  coarse 
in  such  employment,  but  guineas  must  be  had' — a 
feeling  quite  different  from  that  of  Lord  Cockburn  who 
thought  the  aisle  of  St  Giles  had  seen  the  best  work  of 
the  best  men  in  the  kingdom  since  1640.  Perhaps  his 
feelings  on  this  point  were  soothed  by  the  traveller  in 
the  coach,  a  Miss  Silverton,  an  'amiable  creature  who 
has  been  in  France.  I  can  unite  little  fondnesses  with 
perfect  conjugal  love.'  Alas  for  poor  Peggie  Mont- 
gomerie,  'of  the  ancient  house  of  Eglintoun,'  blamed 
by  his  father  for  not  bridling  the  follies  of  his  son, 
waiting,  doubtless,  anxiously  for  the  present  to  the 
second  wife  of  his  father  as  a  means  of  peace-offering  ! 

Then  the  secret  leaks  out  that  the  father  had  refused 
Boswell's  plan  of  being  allowed  ^400  a  year  and  the 
trial  of  fortune  at  the  London  bar.  His  debts  of  ^1000 
had  been  paid,  and  his  allowance  of  ^300  threatened 
with  the  reduction  of  a  third.  The  promise  under  the 
old  yew  had  not  been  kept ;  the  one  bottle  of  hock  as 
a  statutory  limit  had  been  exceeded,  he  had  been 
'not  drunk,  but  was  intoxicated,' — a  subtle  point  for 
bacchanalian  casuists,  and  very  ill  next  day.  He  lays 


n6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

it  on  the  drunken  habits  of  the  country  which,  he  says, 
are  very  bad,  and  with  the  recollection  of  Burns'  tempta- 
tions in  Dumfries  we  may  admit  that  they  were.  His 
father,  too,  was  now  about  to  entail  his  estate,  and  Bozzy's 
predilection  for  feudal  principles  and  heirs  male  brought 
things  to  a  deadlock.  He  appealed  to  Lord  Hailes, 
who  admitted  conscience  and  self  formed  a  strong  plea 
when  found  on  different  sides.  Finally,  after  the  judge 
had  inserted  in  the  deed  his  precautions  against  *  a 
weak,  foolish  and  extravagant  person/  the  estate  was 
entailed  on  Boswell.  *  My  father/  he  tells  Temple, 
'is  so  different  from  me.  We  divaricate  so  much,  as 
Dr  Johnson  said.  He  has  a  method  of  treating  me 
which  makes  me  feel  like  a  timid  boy,  which  to  Boswell 
(comprehending  all  that  my  character  does  in  my  own 
imagination  and  in  that  of  a  wonderful  number  of  man- 
kind) is  intolerable.  It  requires  the  utmost  exertion  of 
practical  philosophy  to  keep  myself  quiet ;  but  it  has  cost 
me  drinking  a  considerable  quantity  of  strong  beer  to  dull 
my  faculties.'  The  picture  of  the  son  drinking  himself 
down  to  the  level  of  the  father  is  truly  inimitable ! 

He  feared  the  final  settlement.  He  might  be  dis- 
graced by  his  father,  and  not  a  shilling  secured  to  his 
wife  and  children.  Then  he  is  comforted  by  the 
thought  that  his  father  is  visibly  failing,  and  he  consults 
his  brother  David  with  a  view  to  a  settlement,  should 
the  succession  pass  to  him.  The  birth  of  a  son,  who 
was  diplomatically  called  Alexander,  was  taken  by  the 
old  man  as  a  compliment,  and  we  find  Boswell  visiting 
at  Auchinleck,  'not  long  at  one  time,  but  frequent 
renewals  of  attention  are  agreeable/  he  finds,  to  his 
father.  He  proposed  to  Johnson  a  tour  round  the 
English  cathedrals,  but  a  brief  trip  with  him  to  Derby- 
shire was  all  that  resulted.  We  now  find  for  the  first 
time  in  the  Life  indications  of  what  would  ensue  when 


JAMES  BOSWELL  117 

the  strong  hand  of  Johnson  was  removed  from  the 
guidance  of  his  weaker  companion.  *  As  we  drove 
back  to  Ashbourne,'  he  writes  with  curious  frankness, 
'  Dr  Johnson  recommended  to  me,  as  he  had  often  done, 
to  drink  water  only,'  and  we  meet  with  as  curious  a 
defence  of  drinking  —  the  great  difficulty  of  resisting  it 
when  a  good  man  asks  you  to  drink  the  wine  he  has 
had  twenty  years  in  his  cellar  !  Benevolence  calls  for 
compliance,  for,  *  curst  be  the  spring]  he  adds  with  a 
change  of  Pope's  verse,  'how  well  soe'er  it  flow,  that 
tends  to  make  one  worthy  man  my  foe  !  '  'I  do/  he 
wrote  in  the  London  Magazine  for  March  1780,  'fairly 
acknowledge  that  I  love  drinking  ;  that  I  have  a  con- 
stitutional inclination  to  indulge  in  fermented  liquors, 
and  that  if  it  were  not  for  the  restraints  of  reason  and 
religion,  I  am  afraid  that  I  should  be  as  constant  a 
votary  of  Bacchus  as  any  man.  Drinking  is  in  reality 
an  occupation  which  employs  a  considerable  portion  of 
the  time  of  many  people;  and  to  conduct  it  in  the 
most  rational  and  agreeable  manner  is  one  of  the  great 
arts  of  living.  Were  we  so  framed  that  it  were  possible 
by  perpetual  supplies  of  wine  to  keep  ourselves  for  ever 
gay  and  happy,  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  drinking 
would  be  the  summum  bonum,  the  chief  good  to  find 
out  which  philosophers  have  been  so  variously  busied/ 
It  looks  as  if  poor  Bozzy,  when  he  wrote  this,  had 
heard  of  the  Brunonian  system  of  medicine,  and  of  the 
unfortunate  exemplication  of  it  in  practice  and  in  pre- 
cept by  its  founder  in  Edinburgh.  No  wonder  such 
excesses  produced  violent  reaction  to  low  spirits  and 
the  'black  dog'  of  hypochondria.  He  finds  it,  after 
going  to  prayers  in  Carlisle  Cathedral,  '  divinely  cheer- 
ing to  have  a  cathedral  so  near  Auchinleck,'  one 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  off,  as  Johnson  sarcastically 
replied.  Bozzy  had  been  writing  a  series  of  articles, 


OF  THK 

(UNIVERSITY) 


n8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

*  The  Hypochondriack,'  in  the  London  Magazine ,  for 
about  two  years,  but  he  was  advised  not  to  mention  his 
own  mental  diseases,  or  to  expect  for  them  either  the 
praise  for  which  there  was  no  room,  or  the  pity  which 
would  do  him  no  good.  The  active  old  man  was  now 
in  better  health  than  he  had  been  upon  the  Hebridean 
tour,  and  was  in  hopes  of  yet  shewing  himself  with 
Boswell  in  some  part  of  Europe,  Asia,  or  Africa. 
'What  have  you  to  do  with  liberty  and  necessity?' 
cries  the  doctor  to  his  friend,  who  had  been  worrying 
himself  and  his  correspondent  with  philosophical  ques- 
tions, on  which  some  six  years  before  he  had  got 
some  light  from  the  Lettres  Persanes  of  Montesquieu. 
'  Come  to  me,  my  dear  Bozzy,  and  let  us  be  as  happy 
as  we  can.  We  will  go  again  to  the  Mitre,  and  talk  old 
times  over.1  Thrice  during  the  1781  visit  to  London 
do  we  see  his  unfortunate  habits  breaking  out;  and, 
when  we  find  him  saying  he  has  unfortunately  preserved 
none  of  the  conversations,  Miss  Hannah  More,  who 
met  him  that  day  at  the  Bishop  of  St  Asaph's,  explains 
it — '  I  was  heartily  disgusted  with  Mr  Boswell,  who 
came  upstairs  after  dinner  much  disordered  with  wine/ 

Let  us  hear  his  own  confession  over  his  conduct  at 
the  house  of  Lady  Galway. 

'  Another  evening  Johnson's  kind  indulgence  towards 
me  had  a  pretty  difficult  trial.  I  had  dined  at  the  Duke 
of  Montrose's  with  a  very  agreeable  party,  and  his  Grace, 
according  to  his  usual  custom,  had  circulated  the  bottle 
very  freely.  Lord  Graham  and  I  went  together  to 
Miss  Monckton's  where  I  certainly  was  in  extraordinary 
spirits,  and  above  all  fear  or  awe.  In  the  midst  of  a 
great  number  of  persons  of  the  first  rank,  amongst 
whom  I  recollect  with  confusion  a  noble  lady  of  the 
most  stately  decorum,  I  placed  myself  next  to  Johnson, 
and  thinking  myself  now  fully  his  match,  talked  to  him 


JAMES  BOSWELL  119 

in  a  loud  and  boisterous  manner,  desirous  to  let  the  com- 
pany know  how  I  could  contend  with  Ajax.  I  particularly 
remember  pressing  him  upon  the  value  of  the  pleasures 
of  the  imagination,  and,  as  an  illustration  of  my  argu- 
ment, asking  him,  "What,  sir,  suppose  I  were  to  fancy 
that  the — (naming  the  most  charming  Duchess  in  his 
Majesty's  dominions)  were  in  love  with  me,  should  I  not 
be  very  happy  ?  "  My  friend  with  much  address  evaded 
my  interrogatories,  and  kept  me  as  quiet  as  possible, 
but  it  may  be  easily  conceived  how  he  must  have  felt.' 

His  father  was  now  dying,  and  a  London  trip,  which 
had  been  planned  by  Boswell  for  1782,  found  the  son 
at  the  very  limit  of  his  credit.  '  If  you  anticipate  your 
inheritance,'  he  was  reminded,  *  you  can  at  last  inherit 
nothing.  Poverty  (added  the  old  impransus  Johnson, 
out  of  the  depths  of  his  own  experience),  my  friend,  is 
so  great  an  evil  that  I  cannot  but  earnestly  enjoin  you 
to  avoid  it.  Live  on  what  you  have ;  live,  if  you  can, 
on  less.'  Lord  Auchinleck  died  suddenly  at  Edinburgh, 
on  August  3oth,  1782;  and  it  was  unfortunate  for 
Bozzy  that  neither  at  the  death  of  his  father  nor  of  his 
mother,  nor,  as  we  shall  see  of  Johnson,  was  he  present. 
The  evening  of  the  old  man's  days  had  been,  we 
are  assured  by  Ramsay  of  Ochtertyre,  clouded  by  the 
follies  and  eccentricities  of  his  son.  For  thirty  years 
he  had  been  sorely  tried ;  twice  he  had  paid  his  debts, 
he  had  indulged  him  with  a  foreign  tour,  had  provided 
him  with  every  means  of  securing  professional  success 
at  the  bar,  only  to  see  that  son  do  everything  to  miss 
it  and  become  everything  his  father  hated  in  life — a 
Tory,  an  Anglican,  and  a  Jacobite.  The  new  laird  was 
anxious  to  display  himself  on  a  wider  sphere.  Johnson 
was  now  visibly  failing,  and  was  glad  of  someone  to  lean 
upon  for  little  attentions.  '  Boswell,'  he  said,  *  I  think 
I  am  easier  with  you  than  with  almost  anybody.  Get 


120  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

as  much  force  of  mind  as  you  can.  Let  your  imports 
be  more  than  your  exports,  and  you'll  never  go  far 
wrong.7  He  reverted  to  the  old  days  of  the  tour  in 
a  hopeful  strain  :  '  I  should  like  to  come  and  have  a 
cottage  in  your  park,  toddle  about,  live  mostly  on  milk, 
and  be  taken  care  of  by  Mrs  Boswell.  She  and  I  are 
good  friends  now,  are  we  not  ? ' 

In  1783  Boswell  appeared  before  the  public  with  a 
Letter  to  the  People  of  Scotland.  It  was  on  Fox's  proposed 
bill  to  regulate  the  affairs  of  the  East  India  Company. 
Against  it  he  stands  forth,  'as  an  ancient  and  faithful 
Briton,  holding  an  estate  transmitted  to  him  by  charters 
from  a  series  of  kings.'  Guardedly  Johnson  admitted 
that  'your  paper  contains  very  considerable  knowledge 
of  history  and  of  the  constitution  :  it  will  certainly  raise 
your  character,  though  perhaps  it  may  not  make  you  a 
minister  of  state.'  A  copy  to  Pitt  elicited  the  formal 
acceptance  of  thanks,  but  the  exclusion  of  the  bill 
Boswell  took  as  proof  of  his  own  advocacy.  He  stood 
for  Ayrshire,  turning  back  from  York  when  the  dissolu- 
tion was  announced.  '  Our  Boswell,'  wrote  the  doctor 
to  Langton,  '  is  now  said  to  stand  for  some  place. 
Whether  to  wish  him  success  his  best  friends  hesitate.' 

May  found  him  with  the  Rambler  for  the  last  time. 
'  I  intend,'  he  writes  to  Dr  Percy,  '  to  be  in  London 
about  the  end  of  this  month,  chiefly  to  attend  upon  Dr 
Johnson  with  respectful  affection.  He  has  for  some 
time  been  very  ill  with  dropsical  asthmatical  complaints, 
which  at  his  age  are  very  alarming.  I  wish  to  publish 
as  a  regale  to  him  a  neat  little  volume — The  Praises  of 
Doctor  Samuel  Johnson^  by  co-temporary  writers.  Will 
your  lordship  take  the  trouble  to  send  me  a  note  of  the 
writers  who  have  praised  our  much  respected  friend?' 
The  attentive  Bozzy  had  written  to  all  the  leading  men 
in  the  Edinburgh  School  of  Medicine — Cullen,  Hope, 


JAMES  BOSWELL  121 

Monro,  and  others.  With  the  expectation  that  an  increase 
of  Johnson's  pension  would  enable  him  to  visit  Italy,  he 
consulted  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  and,  with  his  approval, 
wrote  to  Thurlow  the  Chancellor.  At  the  house  of  the 
painter  they  dined  for  the  last  time. 

'I  accompanied  him  in  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds's  coach,  to  the  entry 
of  Bolt  Court.  He  asked  me  whether  I  would  not  go  with  him  to 
his  house  ;  I  declined  it,  from  an  apprehension  that  my  spirits 
would  sink.  We  bade  adieu  to  each  other  affectionately  in  the 
carriage.  When  he  had  got  down  upon  the  foot-pavement  he 
called  out,  "Fare  you  well;1'  and,  without  looking  back,  sprung 
away  with  a  kind  of  pathetick  briskness,  if  I  may  use  that  expression, 
which  seemed  to  indicate  a  struggle  to  conceal  uneasiness,  and  im- 
pressed me  with  a  foreboding  of  our  long,  long  separation.' 

We  think  of  the  dying  Cervantes,  and  the  student- 
admirer  of  the  All  Famous  and  the  Joy  of  the  Muses — 
*  parting  at  the  Toledo  bridge,  he  turning  aside  to  take 
the  road  to  Segovia/ 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  ENGLISH  BAR DEATH.   1784-1795 

'Ambition  should  be  made  of  sterner  stuff.' — JULIUS  CESAR,  iii.  2. 

THERE  is  something  unsatisfactory  in  the  fact  that 
Boswell  was  not  with  Johnson  as  he  died.  It  gives  to 
his  book  an  air  of  something  distinctly  lacking,  which 
is  not  with  us  as  we  close  Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott.  His 
own  account  is  that  he  was  indisposed  during  a  con- 
siderable part  of  the  year,  which  may,  or  may  not,  be  a 
euphemism  for  irregular  habits ;  yet,  when  we  consider 
how  easily  he  might  have  been  with  his  old  friend,  we 
must  own  to  a  feeling  that  Bosweirs  mere  satisfaction 
at  learning  he  was  spoken  of  with  affection  by  Johnson 
at  the  close  does  not  satisfy  the  nature  of  things  or  the 
artistic  sense  of  fitness.  No  literary  executor  had  been 
appointed,  and  the  materials  for  a  biography  had  been 
mostly  destroyed  by  Johnson's  orders.  This,  we  may  be 
sure,  had  not  been  expected  by  Boswell,  who  set  himself, 
however,  to  prepare  for  the  press  his  own  Journal  of  'a 
Tour  to  the  Hebrides^  which  his  friend  when  alive  had  not 
been  willing  to  see  appear  as  a  pendant  to  the  Journey. 
'  Between  ourselves/  he  tells  Temple,  '  he  is  not  apt  to 
encourage  one  to  share  reputation  with  him.'  Yet  he 
felt,  as  he  wrote  to  Percy  on  2oth  March  1785,  that  it 
was  a  great  consolation  to  him  now  that  he  had,  as  it 
was,  collected  so  much  of  the  wit  and  the  wisdom  of 


JAMES  BOSWELL  123 

that  wonderful  man.  '  I  do  not  expect/  he  adds,  '  to 
recover  from  it.  I  gaze  after  him  with  an  eager  eye ; 
and  I  hope  again  to  be  with  him/ 

Now  that  the  strong  hand  of  Johnson  was  removed, 
'and  the  light  of  his  life  as  if  gone  out/  the  rest  of 
BoswelPs  life  was  but  a  downward  course.  He  struggles 
with  himself,  and  feels  instinctively  the  lack  of  the  curb 
which  the  powerful  intellect  of  the  Rambler  had  held 
on  the  weaker  character  of  the  other.  We  find  him  re- 
peating often  to  himself  the  lines  from  the  Vanity  of 
Human  Wishes : — 

1  Shall  helpless  man,  in  ignorance  sedate, 
Roll  darkling  down  the  torrent  of  his  fate  ? ' 

The  Lord  Advocate  had  brought  into  the  Commons 
a  bill  for  the  reconstruction  of  the  Court  of  Session, 
proposing  to  reduce  the  number  of  judges  from  fifteen 
to  ten,  with  a  corresponding  increase  of  salary.  The 
occasion  was  wildly  seized  by  Boswell  in  May  1785 
to  issue  a  half-crown  pamphlet,  with  the  title,  '  A  letter 
to  the  People  of  Scotland,  on  the  alarming  attempt  to 
infringe  the  Articles  of  the  Union,  and  introduce  a  most 
pernicious  innovation,  by  diminishing  the  number  of 
the  Lords  of  Session.'  This  extraordinary  production, 
intended  doubtless  as  a  means  of  recommendation  of 
the  author  for  parliamentary  honours,  can  hardly  now 
be  read  in  the  light  of  events  by  any  sympathetic 
Boswellian  but  with  feelings  of  sorrow  and  confusion. 
Its  publication  we  may  be  sure  would  never  have  been 
sanctioned  by  Johnson. 

After  stating  the  foundation  of  the  Court  of  Session, 
by  James  V.  in  1532,  on  the  model  of  the  Parliament 
of  Paris,  he  attacks  Dundas  for  having  in  himself  the 
whole  power  of  a  grand  jury.  '  Mr  Edward  Bright  of 


i24  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Maiden,  the  fat  man  whose  print  is  in  all  our  inns, 
could  button  seven  men  in  his  waistcoat;  but  the 
learned  lord  comprehends  hundreds/  He  calls  on  the 
Scottish  people  not  to  be  cowed :  '  let  Lowther  come 
forth  (we  cannot  emulate  Boswell  in  the  plenitude  and 
the  magnitude  of  his  capital  letters  and  '  other  typo- 
graphical devices),  he  upon  whom  the  thousands  of 
Whitehaven  depend  for  three  of  the  elements.'  His 
own  opposition  he  proclaims  is  honest,  because  he  has 
no  wish  for  an  office  in  the  Court  of  Session ;  he  will  try 
his  abilities  in  a  wider  sphere.  Rumours  of  a  coalition 
in  the  county  of  Ayr  between  Sir  Adam  Ferguson  and 
the  Earl  of  Eglintoun  he  hopes  are  unfounded,  'both 
as  an  enthusiast  for  ancient  feudal  attachments,  and  as 
having  the  honour  and  happiness  to  be  married  to  his 
lordship's  relation,  a  true  Montgomerie,  whom  I  esteem, 
whom  I  love,  after  fifteen  years,  as  on  the  day  when  she 
gave  me  her  hand.'  He  assures  the  people  they  will 
have  their  objections  to  the  bill  supported  by  'my  old 
classical  companion  Wilkes,  with  whom  I  pray  you  to 
excuse  my  keeping  company,  he  is  so  pleasant ; '  by  Mr 
Burke,  the  Lord  Rector  of  the  University  of  Glasgow, 
and  by  'that  brave  Irishman,  Captain  Macbride,  the 
cousin  of  my  wife.'  In  grandiose  capitals  he  appeals 
to  Fox  and  to  Pitt.  '  Great  sir,'  he  cries,  '  forgive 
my  thus  presumptuously,  thus  rashly,  attempting  for  a 
moment  to  forge  your  thunder !  But  I  conjure  you — in 
the  name  of  God  and  the  King,  I  conjure  you — to 
announce  in  your  own  lofty  language,  that  there  shall  be 
a  stop  put  to  this  conspiracy,  which  I  fear  might  have 
the  effect  of  springing  a  mine  that  would  blow  up  your 
administration.'  This  letter  'hastily  written  upon  the 
spur  of  the  occasion  is  already  too  long,'  yet  he  calls 
upon  his  countrymen  to  allow  him  to  'indulge  a  little 
more  my  own  egotism  and  vanity,  the  indigenous  plants 


JAMES  BOSWELL  125 

of  my  own  mind/  His  whole  genealogy,  Flodden  and 
all,  we  hear  over  again.  '  If,'  he  pertinently  adds,  '  it 
should  be  asked  what  this  note  has  to  do  here,  I  answer 
to  illustrate  the  authour  of  the  text.  And  to  pour  out  all 
myself  as  old  Montaigne,  I  wish  all  this  to  be  known/ 
After  a  eulogy  of  himself  as  no  time-server,  and  his  pro- 
fession of  readiness  '  to  discuss  topicks  with  mitred  St 
Asaph,  and  others ;  to  drink,  to  laugh,  to  converse  with 
Quakers,  Republicans,  Jews  and  Moravians/  he  exhorts 
his  friends  and  countrymen,  in  the  words  of  his  departed 
Goldsmith,  who  gave  him  many  Attic  nights  and  that 
jewel  of  the  finest  water,  the  acquaintance  of  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds,  'to  fly  from  petty  tyrants  to  the  throne.' 
He  declares  himself  a  Tory,  but  no  slave.  He  is  in 
possession  of  an  essay,  dictated  to  him  by  Dr  Johnson, 
on  the  distinction  between  Whig  and  Tory,  and  con- 
cludes with  eclat,  'with  one  of  the  finest  passages  in 
John  Home's  noble  and  elegant  tragedy  of  Douglas? 

No  condensation  of  this,  the  most  *  characteristical ' 
of  all  his  writings,  can  give  the  reader  any  idea  of  this 
extraordinary  production.  Once  only  does  it  deviate 
into  sense  when,  on  the  last  page,  we  find  the  advertise- 
ment of  the  Tour  to  the  Hebrides,  '  which  was  read  and 
liked  by  Dr  Johnson,  and  will  faithfully  and  minutely 
exhibit  what  he  said  was  the  pleasantest  part  of  his 
life.' 

In  the  Hilary  Term  of  1786,  he  was  called  to  the 
English  bar,  feeling  it,  as  he  said,  '  a  pity  to  dig  in  a 
lead  mine,  when  he  could  dig  in  a  gold  one.'  Johnson 
had  always  thrown  cold  water  on  the  idea,  though  as 
early  as  February  1775,  as  we  find  from  a  letter  of 
BoswelPs  to  Strahan  the  printer,  the  idea  had  been 
proposed  to  him.  In  the  May  of  1786  he  writes  to 
Mickle,  the  translator  of  the  Lusiad,  that  he  is  in  a 
wavering  state  ;  he  has  the  house  of  his  friend  Hoole, 


126  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

and  he  still  retains  the  use  of  General  Paoli's  residence 
in  Portman  Square.  When  he  did  finally  take  up  his 
own  quarters  in  Cavendish  Square,  the  result  was  not 
what  he  had  expected.  He  was  discouraged  by  the 
want  of  practice,  and  the  prospect  of  any.  In  fact,  he 
was  to  feel  what,  as  Malone  says,  Lord  Auchinleck  had 
all  along  told  his  son,  that  it  would  cost  him  much 
more  trouble  to  hide  his  ignorance  of  Scotch  and 
English  law  than  to  shew  his  knowledge.  He  feared 
his  own  deficiencies  in  '  the  forms,  quirks  and 
quiddities/  which  he  saw  could  be  learned  only  by 
early  habit.  He  even  doubted  whether  he  should  not 
be  satisfied  with  being  simply  baron  of  Auchinleck  with 
a  good  income  in  Scotland;  but  he  felt  that  such  a 
course  could  not  c  deaden  the  ambition  which  has 
raged  in  my  veins  like  a  fever.'  The  Horatian 
motto  inscribed  on  the  front  of  Auchinleck  House, 
telling  of  the  peace  of  mind  dearer  than  all  to  be  found 
everywhere,  if  the  mind  itself  is  in  its  own  place,  was 
never  appreciated,  however,  by  the  new  laird. 

His  ignorance  of  law  was  soon  shewn  at  the  Lancaster 
assizes.  Mr  Leslie  Stephen  is  inclined  to  view  the  story 
as  being  not  very  credible.  Yet  we  fear  the  authority 
is  indisputable.  'We  found  Jemmy  Boswell,'  writes 
Lord  Eldon,  '  lying  upon  the  pavement — inebriated. 
We  subscribed  at  supper  a  guinea  for  him  and  half  a 
guinea  for  his  clerk,  and  sent  him  next  morning  a 
brief  with  instructions  to  move  for  the  writ  of  Quare 
adhczsit  pavimento,  with  observations  calculated  to 
induce  him  to  think  that  it  required  great  learning  to 
explain  the  necessity  of  granting  it.  He  sent  all  round 
the  town  to  attorneys  for  books,  but  in  vain.  He 
moved,  however,  for  the  writ,  making  the  best  use  he 
could  of  the  observations  in  the  brief.  The  judge  was 
astonished,  and  the  audience  amazed.  The  judge  said, 


JAMES  BOSWELL  127 

c  I  never  heard  of  such  a  writ — what  can  it  be  that 
adheres  pavimento  ?  Are  any  of  you  gentlemen  at  the 
bar  able  to  explain  this  ? '  The  Bar  laughed.  At  last 
one  of  them  said,  *  My  Lord,  Mr  Boswell  last  night 
adhasit  pavimento.  There  was  no  moving  him  for 
some  time.  At  last  he  was  carried  to  bed,  and  he  has 
been  dreaming  about  himself  and  the  pavement.' 
Lord  Jeffrey  once  assisted  Bozzy  to  bed  in  similar 
circumstances.  'You  are  a  promising  lad/  he  told 
him  next  morning,  'and  if  you  go  on  as  you  have 
begun,  you  may  be  a  Bozzy  yourself  yet.'  No  wonder 
that  we  find  him  hesitating  about  going  on  the  spring 
northern  circuit,  which  would  cost  him,  he  says,  fifty 
pounds,  and  oblige  him  to  be  in  rough  company  for 
four  weeks. 

His  only  piece  of  promotion  came  from  Lord 
Lonsdale.  Pitt  had  been  brought  in  by  this  nobleman 
for  the  pocket-borough  of  Appleby,  and  Bozzy  had  hopes 
of  a  Parliamentary  introduction  that  way.  Carlyle  of 
Inveresk  found  this  worthless  patron  of  the  unfortunate 
office  seeker  '  more  detested  than  any  man  alive,  as  a 
shameless  political  sharper,  a  domestic  bashaw,  and  an 
intolerable  tyrant  over  his  tenants.'  Penrith  and 
Whitehaven  were  in  fear  when  he  walked  their  streets ; 
he  defied  his  creditors ;  and  the  father  of  the  poet 
Wordsworth  died  without  being  able  to  enforce  his 
claims.  The  author  of  the  Rolliad  describes  his  power 
as 

'  Even  by  the  elements  confessed, 
Of  mines  and  boroughs  Lonsdale  stands  possessed ; 
And  one  sad  servitude  alike  denotes 
The  slave  that  labours  and  the  slave  that  votes.' 

It  was  on  this  political  boroughmonger  and  jobber 
that  Boswell  was  now  pinning  his  faith.  The  complete 


128  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

dependence  of  him  on  Lonsdale  in  return  for  the 
Recordership  of  Carlisle  did  not  escape  the  notice  of  the 
wits,  who  now  found  that  the  writer  who  had  been 
declaring  over  the  India  Bill  of  Fox  his  devotion  to 
the  throne,  the  Tory,  but  no  slave,  had  transferred  his 
entire  loyalty  and  abjectest  protestations  to  '  his  king  in 
Westmoreland/  To  add  to  his  distress,  his  wife  was 
dying.  A  short  trial  of  London  had  led  her  to  return 
to  Ayrshire,  and  her  husband  was  lost  in  doubt  whether 
to  revisit  her  or  cling  to  '  the  great  sphere  of  England/ 
the  whirl  of  the  metropolis,  in  hopes  that  the  great  prize 
would  at  last  be  drawn.  In  the  north  he  found  her 
still  lingering  on,  but  in  his  eagerness  to  obtain  political 
influence  '  I  drank  so  freely  that  riding  home  in  the 
dark  I  fell  from  my  horse  and  bruised  my  shoulder.' 
From  London  he  was  again  summoned,  but  with  his 
curious  infelicity  at  such  times  of  trouble,  he  was  not  in 
time  to  witness  her  death  :  *  not  till  my  second  daughter 
came  running  out  from  the  house  and  announced  to  us 
the  dismal  event  in  a  burst  of  tears.7  Remorse  found 
vent  in  an  agony  of  grief.  '  She  never  would  have  left 
me/  he  cries  to  Temple ;  '  this  reflection  will  pursue 
me  to  my  grave/  In  July,  the  widower  of  a  month 
hastened  north  to  contest  the  county,  only  to  find  Sir 
Adam  Fergusson  chosen.  '  Let  me  never  impiously  re- 
pine/ is  his  cry  of  distress.  *  Yet  as  "  Jesus  wept "  for 
the  death  of  Lazarus,  I  hope  my  tears  at  this  time  are 
excused.  The  woeful  circumstance  of  such  a  state  of 
mind  is  that  it  rejects  consolation ;  it  feels  an  indulgence 
in  its  own  wretchedness.7  His  hustings  appearances 
would  appear  to  have  been  at  least  marked  by  fluency, 
for  Burns,  his  junior  by  eighteen  years,  declares  his  own 
inability  to  fight  like  Montgomerie  or  '  gab  like 
Boswell.' 

As  he  draws  to  a  close,  the  letters  of  Boswell  improve 


JAMES  BOS  WELL  129 

both  in  form  and  matter.  It  is  painful  to  see  him  on 
every  hand  seeking  the  Parliamentary  interest  out  of 
which  he  was  all  the  while  doing  his  best  to  write 
himself.  No  party  could  or  would  take  him  seriously. 
His  rent-roll  was  over  ,£1600,  a  large  sum  in  these 
days,  and  it  was  yearly  rising.  Earnestly  did  his 
brother  David  press  upon  him  a  return  to  Auchinleck 
and  the  retrenchment  of  his  expenses.  But  the  spell 
of  the  lights  of  London  was  on  him,  and  *  I  could  not 
endure  Edinburgh/  he  tells  us,  ( unless  I  were  to  have 
a  judge's  place  to  bear  me  up/  and  that  was  a  thing 
not  to  be  dreamed  of  after  the  publication  of  the  Letter. 
He  dispersed  his  family  to  various  schools,  finding  the 
eldest  of  the  boys  beginning  to  oppose  him,  'and  no 
wonder/  as  he  bitterly  adds.  Then  the  cry  is  forced 
from  him  in  allusion  to  the  famous  passage  in  Shake- 
speare on  Wolsey's  hopes  and  fall — a  passage  which, 
curiously  enough,  we  have  come  upon  in  the  common- 
place book  which  Boswell  had  kept  as  a  boy — 'O 
Temple,  Temple,  is  this  realizing  any  of  the  towering 
hopes  which  have  so  often  been  the  subject  of  our  letters. 
Yet  I  live  much  with  a  great  man,  who,  upon  any  day 
that  his  fancy  shall  be  inclined,  may  obtain  for  me  an 
office.'  Everywhere  he  casts  about,  trying  the  Lord 
Chancellor,  not  seeing  the  smallest  opening  in  West- 
minster Hall,  but  buoyed  up  by  'the  delusion  that 
practice  may  come  at  any  time.' 

'  We  must  do  something  for  you/  Burke  had  said  in 
a  kindly  way,  'for  our  own  sakes.'  He  recommended 
him  to  General  Con  way,  but  though  the  place  was  not 
obtained  the  letter  was  valued  by  Boswell  more. 
Writing  to  Mr  Abercrombie  in  America,  even  as  late 
as  the  July  of  1793,  he  is  found  expressing  'a  great 
wish  to  see  that  country;  and  I  once  flattered  myself 
that  I  should  be  sent  thither  in  a  station  of  some 


130  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

importance ; '  and  from  a  letter  to  Burke  we  learn  that 
this  expected  post  had  been  a  commissionership  in  the 
treaty  between  America  and  Britain.  Dundas  was 
another  of  his  hopes.  cThe  excellent  Langton  says 
it  is  disgraceful,  it  is  utter  folly  in  Pitt  not  to  attach 
to  his  administration  a  man  of  my  popular  and  pleasant 
talents.'  Dundas,  however,  after  having  been  given  a 
margin  of  two  months  for  a  reply,  has  made  no  sign ; 
'how  can  I  delude  myself?  I  will  tell  you/  he  informs 
Temple,  'Lord  Lonsdale  shews  me  more  and  more 
regard.  Three  of  his  members  assure  me  that  he  will 
give  me  a  seat  at  the  General  Election.'  Then  that 
last  reed  was  to  break.  At  Lowther  Castle,  his  wig 
was  removed  from  his  room,  as  a  practical  joke  of  a 
coarse  order  on  the  unoffending  Boswell,  and  all  the 
day  he  was  obliged  to  go  in  his  nightcap,  which  he  felt 
was  very  ill-timed  to  one  in  his  situation.  The  loss  of 
the  wig  the  unsuspecting  victim  declares  will  remain  as 
great  a  secret  as  the  writer  of  the  letters  of  Junius,  but 
ere  long  the  tyrant  whom  he  had  invoked  as  the  man 
of  Macedonia  to  help  Scotland  has  undeceived  him. 
'I  suppose  you  thought/  he  roughly  said,  'I  was  to 
bring  you  into  Parliament  ?  I  never  had  any  such  in- 
tention/ It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  for  Boswell  at  this 
crisis.  '  I  am  down  at  an  inn/  he  writes  to  Temple, 
4  and  ashamed  and  sunk  on  account  of  the  disappoint- 
ment of  hopes  which  led  me  to  endure  such  grievances. 
I  deserve  all  that  I  suffer.  I  am  at  the  same  time  dis- 
tracted what  to  do  in  my  own  county.  I  am  quite  in 
a  fever.  O  my  old  and  most  intimate  friend,  I  intreat 
you  to  afford  me  some  consolation,  and  pray  do  not 
divulge  my  mortification.  I  now  resign  my  Recorder- 
ship,  and  shall  get  rid  of  all  connection  with  this  brutal 
fellow.'  His  last  Parliamentary  venture  was  cut  short 
by  the  reflection  how  small  was  his  following.  How 


JAMES  BOS  WELL  131 

curiously  after  all  this  reads  his  own  little  autobio- 
graphical sketch  in  the  European  Magazine  I  '  It  was 
generally  supposed  that  Mr  Boswell  would  have  had  a 
seat  in  Parliament ;  and  indeed  his  not  being  amongst 
the  Representatives  of  the  Commons  is  one  of  those 
strange  things  which  occasionally  happen  in  the  complex 
operations  of  our  mixed  Government.  That  he  has  not 
been  brought  into  Parliament  by  some  great  man  is  not 
to  be  wondered  at  when  we  peruse  his  publick  declara- 
tion.' Not  to  be  wondered  at,  truly,  though  the  writer 
chose  to  refer  the  wonder  to  his  independence.  Then 
the  reader  is  informed  how  he  had  been  a  candidate  at 
the  general  election  for  his  own  county  of  Ayr,  '  where 
he  has  a  very  extensive  property  and  a  very  fine  place 
of  which  there  is  a  view  and  description  in  Grose's 
Antiquities  of  Scotland J  The  conclusion  of  the  sketch 
relates  how,  at  the  last  Lord  Mayor's  day,  he  sang  with 
great  applause  a  state-ballad  of  his  own  composition, 
entitled  The  Grocer  of  London.  This  was  the  last  shot 
in  the  political  locker.  At  a  Guildhall  dinner,  given  to 
Pitt  by  the  worshipful  company  of  grocers,  Boswell 
contrived  to  get  himself  called  upon  for  a  song.  He 
rose,  and  delivered  himself  of  a  catch  on  the  model  of 
Dibdin's  '  Little  cherub  that  sits  up  aloft/  prefaced 
and  interlarded  by  an  address  to  the  guest  of  the 
evening.  Honoured  as  he  had  been  on  his  continental 
tour  at  the  courts  of  Europe,  yet  never  till  to-night  had 
he  felt  himself  so  flattered  as  now  he  was,  in  the 
presence  of  the  minister  he  admired,  and  to  whose 
home  and  foreign  policy  he  gave  a  hearty,  if  discrimi- 
nating support.  Boswell  for  his  song  was  encored  six 
times,  till  the  cold  features  of  the  minister  were  seen  to 
relax  in  a  smile,  amid  the  general  roar  of  plaudits  and 
laughter !  After  this  '  state  ballad, '  a  copy  of  which 
was  last  seen  at  Lord  Houghton's  sale,  Eozzy  and  a 


132  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

friend,  in  a  state  of  high  glee,  returned  to  their  lodgings, 
shouting  all  the  way  The  Grocer  of  London  I  '  He  has 
declared/  adds  the  complacent  autobiographer,  'his 
resolution  to  persevere  on  the  next  vacancy.* 

All  this  time  his  great  work  was  slowly  advancing. 
At  the  end  of  the  Journal  had  appeared  a  notice  : 
'preparing  for  the  Press,  in  one  volume  quarto,  the 
Life  of  Samuel  Johnson,  ZZ.Z>.,  by  James  Boswell,  Esq.' 
The  note  proceeds  to  sketch  the  plan ;  the  collecting  of 
materials  for  more  than  twenty  years,  his  desire  to  erect 
to  him  a  literary  monument,  the  interweaving  of  'the 
most  authentick  accounts '  that  can  be  obtained  from 
those  who  knew  him,  etc.  To  his  chagrin,  Mrs  Thrale's 
volume  of  anecdotes  had  been  out  before  him,  and  Sir 
John  Hawkins  had  been  commissioned  by  the  London 
booksellers  to  produce  a  Life,  which  had  duly  appeared. 
Not  even  the  unequivocal  success  and  merits  of  the 
Journal  could  induce  '  the  trade '  to  take  Boswell  seri- 
ously. No  one  had  thought  of  him,  any  more  than  Gay 
would  have  been  thought  of  as  the  biographer  of  the 
circle  to  which  he  had  been  admitted.  Percy,  even  Sir 
William  Scott,  had  been  successively  approached,  but 
none  had  given  a  consideration  to  'Johnson's  Bozzy.' 
Such  neglect,  however,  must  have  spurred  him  to  exer- 
tion. The  lively  lady's  anecdotage,  dateless  and  confused, 
he  could  afford  to  despise  as  '  too  void  of  method  even 
for  such  a  farrago/  as  Horace  Walpole  said  of  it.  But 
the  solemn  Hawkins,  as  an  old  friend  and  executor  of 
Johnson's  will,  was  a  more  dangerous  rival.  '  Observe 
how  he  talks  of  me/  cries  Boswell  querulously,  'as 
quite  unknown.1  No  doubt  Sir  John  was  '  unclubable/ 
and  by  Reynolds,  Dyer,  Percy,  and  Malone  he  was 
detested.  Yet  his  book,  though  eclipsed  by  Boswell's, 
is  not  unmeritorious ;  but  for  his  allusion  to  '  Mr 
Boswell,  a  native  of  Scotland/  he  has  been  made  to 


JAMES  BOSWELL  133 

pay  severely  by  systematic  castigation  from  his  rival, 
who  now  doggedly,  as  Johnson  would  have  said,  set 
himself  to  the  work  before  him.  Wherever  first-hand 
information  could  be  had,  he  was  constantly  on  the 
track.  Miss  Burney  has  told  how  she  met  him  at  the 
gate  of  the  choir  of  St  George's  chapel  at  Windsor — 
4  his  comic-serious  face  having  lost  none  of  its  wonted 
singularity,  nor  yet  his  mind  and  language.'  She  had 
letters  from  Johnson,  and  he  must  have  some  of  the 
doctor's  choice  little  notes :  '  We  have  seen  him  long 
enough  upon  stilts,  I  want  to  shew  him  in  a  new  light. 
He  proposed  a  thousand  curious  expedients  to  get 
them,  but  I  was  invincible.'  The  approach  of  the 
king  and  queen  broke  off  the  interview,  but  next 
morning  he  was  again  on  the  watch.  We  must  regret 
that  they  were  not  given,  however  much  his  indiscretions 
had  made  people  chary  of  their  confidences.  '  Jemmy 
Bos  well,'  writes  Lord  Eldon,  c  called  upon  me,  desiring 
to  know  my  definition  of  taste.  I  told  him  I  must 
decline  defining  it,  because  I  knew  he  would  publish  it.' 
To  secure  first-hand,  sifted,  and  '  authentick '  material 
this  man,  so  long  decried  by  sciolists  as  merely  a  fool 
with  a  note-book,  would  forego  every  rebuff  or  refusal. 
1  Boswell,'  says  Horace  Walpole,  '  that  quintessence  of 
busy-bodies  called  on  me  last  week,  and  was  let  in  when 
he  should  not  have  been.  After  tapping  many  topics, 
to  which  I  made  as  dry  answers  as  an  unbribed  oracle, 
he  vented  his  errand ;  *  had  I  seen  Dr  Johnson's  Lives 
of  the  Poets  ?' 

During  the  progress  of  the  Life  he  turned  aside  to 
his  last  literary  vagary — No  Abolition  of  Slavery  ;  or  the 
Universal  Empire  of  Love,  1791.  This  long-lost 
brochure  has  this  year  been  rediscovered,  but  it  will  add 
little  interest  to  his  life,  as  its  main  tenets  had  long 
been  known.  A  writer  in  the  Athenaum  for  May  9th 


134  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

describes  it  as  quarto  in  form,  and  dedicated  to  Miss 

B ,  whom    he  identifies  with  Miss    Bagnal    to    be 

shortly  mentioned.  On  the  three  topics  of  slavery,  the 
Middlesex  election,  and  America,  Bozzy  differed  respect- 
fully but  firmly  from  the  doctor,  who  drank  at  Oxford 
to  the  next  insurrection  of  the  negroes'  in  the  West 
Indies.  Accordingly  he  stands  stoutly  by  the  planters 
and  the  feudal  scheme  of  subordination,  whose  annihila- 
tion he  maintains  would  '  shut  the  gates  of  mercy  on 
mankind.'  For  his  apparent  inconsistency  Burke  is 
attacked  : — 

'  Burke,  art  thou  here,  too  ?  thou  whose  pen 
Can  blast  the  fancied  rights  of  men. 
Pray  by  what  logic  are  those  rights 
Allow'd  to  Blacks,— denied  to  Whites  ?  ' 

Others  may  fail  their  king  and  country,  but  he  as  a 
throne  and  altar  Tory  calls  all  to  know  that 

*  An  ancient  baron  of  the  land 
I  by  my  king  shall  ever  stand.' 

He  was  now  at  last  near  the  haven.  The  mass  of 
his  papers  and  materials  had  been  arranged,  after  a 
labour  which,  as  he  tells  Reynolds,  was  really  enormous. 
The  capacity  for  sustained  effort,  when  set  to  it,  of 
which  he  had  boasted  over  his  condensation  of  the 
evidence  in  the  great  Douglas  case,  stood  him  now  in 
good  service  amid  all  his  vexations,  dissipations  and 
follies. 

In  February  1788  we  hear  of  his  having  yet  seven 
years  of  the  life  to  write.  By  January  1789  he  had 
finished  the  introduction  and  the  dedication  to  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,  both  of  which  had  appeared  difficult, 
but  he  was  confident  they  had  been  well  done.  To 


JAMES  BOSWELL  135 

excite  the  interest  in  his  coming  book,  or  as  Mr  Leslie 
Stephen  thinks,  to  secure  copyright,  he  published  in 
1790  two  quarto  parts  at  half  a  guinea  each — the 
letter  to  Chesterfield  and  the  conversation  of  Johnson 
with  the  king.  By  December  he  has  had  additional 
matter  sent  him  from  Warren  Hastings,  and  he  hoped 
to  be  out  on  8th  March,  but  the  January  of  the  new 
year  found  him  with  still  two  hundred  pages  of  copy, 
and  the  death  not  yet  written.  Yet  many  a  time,  as 
he  writes  Temple,  had  he  thought  of  giving  it  up.  To 
add  to  his  troubles,  he  had  indulged  in  landed  specula- 
tions, paying  £2 500  for  the  estate  of  a  younger  branch; 
he  had  been  lending  money  to  a  cousin,  and  if  he  could 
but  raise  a  thousand  pounds  on  the  strength  of  his 
book,  he  should  be  inclined  to  hold  on,  or  *  game  with 
it/  as  Sir  Joshua  said.  Neither  Reynolds  nor  Malone, 
however,  took  the  hint ;  and  at  the  latter's  door  he  cast 
longing  looks  as  he  passed.  He  tells  him  he  had  been 
in  the  chair  at  the  club,  with  Fox  '  quoting  Homer  and 
Fielding  to  the  astonishment  of  Jo.  Warton.'  He  had 
bought  a  lottery  ticket  with  the  hopes  of  the  prize  of 
^5000,  but — blank  !  The  advance  he  needed  was  got 
elsewhere,  and  the  property  in  his  book  saved.  April 
finds  him  correcting  the  last  sheet.  He  feared  the 
result :  '  I  may  get  no  profit,  the  public  may  be 
disappointed,  I  may  make  enemies,  even  have  quarrels. 
But  the  very  reverse  of  all  this  may  happen/  Then 
on  the  1 9th  he  writes  to  Dempster  :  'my  magnum  opus, 
in  two  volumes  quarto,  is  to  be  published  on  Monday, 
1 6th  May ' — by  a  lucky  chance  it  was  the  anniversary 
of  the  red  day  in  Boswell's  calendar,  his  meeting  with 
Johnson  eight  and  twenty  years  before  !  '  When  it  is 
fairly  launched,  I  mean  to  stick  close  to  Westminster 
Hall,  and  it  will  be  truly  kind  if  you  recommend  me 
appeals  or  causes  of  any  sort/ 


i36  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

The  rest  of  his  life  is  soon  told.  Paoli  was  now 
again  in  Corsica.  When  Mirabeau  had  recalled  the 
exiles,  the  general  had  been  made  by  Louis  XVI. 
military  commandant  of  the  island.  Johnson,  also, 
was  gone,  and  the  two  strongest  checks  upon  the 
excesses  of  Boswell  were  removed.  Piteous  it  is  to 
find  him  writing  to  Malone :  '  that  most  friendly  fellow 
Courtenay,  begging  the  pardon  of  an  M.P.  for  so  free 
an  epithet,'  had  taken  him  in  hand,  and  had  taken  his 
word  that  for  some  months  his  daily  allowance  of  wine 
should  not  exceed  four  good  glasses  at  dinner,  and  a 
pint  after  it.  The  qualifying  adjective  *  good '  is 
dangerous,  and  before  the  time  for  the  bill  was  half 
expired,  Bozzy  has  closured  it  and  the  amendment. 
The  state  of  his  affairs,  the  loss  of  his  wife  bore  heavily 
on  him,  together  with  'the  disadvantage  to  my 
children  in  having  so  wretched  a  father — nay,  the  want 
of  absolute  certainty  of  being  happy  after  death,  the 
sure  prospect  of  which  is  frightful.'  Then  a  fitful 
gleam  of  the  old  Adam  breaks  out.  He  has  heard  of 
a  Miss  Bagnal,  'about  seven  and  twenty,  lively  and  gay, 
a  Ranelagh  girl,  but  of  excellent  principles  insomuch 
that  she  reads  prayers  to  the  servants  in  her  father's 
family  every  Sunday  evening.'  Another  matrimonial 
scheme  was  the  daughter  of  the  late  Dean  of  Exeter, 
'a  most  agreeable  woman  d'un  certain  dge,'  as  he 
engagingly  adds,  'and  with  a  fortune  of  ;£  10,000.' 
The  preparation  of  a  second  edition  of  the  Life  for  July 
1793  raised  his  spirits,  but  after  a  while  he  had  run 
into  excess,  been  knocked  down  and  robbed.  This 
he  vows  shall  be  a  crisis  in  his  life,  and  Temple's 
apprehension  of  his  friend  being  carried  off  in  a  state 
of  intoxication  he  finds  awful  to  contemplate.  Early  in 
1795  the  end  is  announced  by  Temple's  son  writing 
to  his  father — c  a  few  nights  ago  Mr  Boswell  returned 


JAMES  BOSWELL  137 

from  the  Literary  Club,  quite  weak  and  languid ; '  and 
the  last  letter  to  Temple  from  his  correspondent  of 
thirty-seven  years  is  dated  8th  April :  '  I  would  fain 
write  to  you  in  my  own  hand,  but  really  cannot.'  His 
son  James  finishes  the  letter,  to  tell  that  the  patient 
'  feels  himself  a  good  deal  stronger  to-day/  He  was 
attended  by  Dr  Warren,  who  had  been  with  Johnson 
as  he  died.  Some  slight  hopes  of  a  recovery  had  been 
held  out ;  and,  with  the  ruling  passion  strong  in  death 
to  interview  a  celebrity,  he  rallied  in  a  letter  to  Warren 
Hastings.  With  the  spirit  on  him  of  the  days  when 
he  had  told  Chatham  that  his  disinterested  soul  had 
enjoyed  the  contemplation  of  the  great  minister  in  the 
bower  of  philosophy,  he  tells  him,  *  the  moment  I  am 
able  to  go  abroad,  I  will  fly  to  Mr  Hastings  and  expand 
my  soul  in  the  purest  satisfaction.'  On  May  i  Qth 
1795,  at  two  m  tne  rnorning,  after  an  illness  of  five 
weeks,  he  died.  He  was  in  his  fifty-fifth  year. 

A  life  which  cannot  challenge  the  world's  attention — 
like  that  of  John  Sterling — which  perhaps  does  not  even 
modestly  solicit  it,  yet  one  which  no  less  certainly  will 
be  found  to  reward  the  critic  of  literary  history  and 
pathology.  A  complex,  weak,  unsteady  life  enough, 
and  no  one  did  more  than  Boswell  himself  to  bring 
into  glaring  prominence  the  faults  that  lie  on  the  surface, 
by  that  frank,  open,  and  ostentatious  peculiarity  which 
he  avowed,  and  which  he  compared  to  the  characteristics 
of  the  old  seigneur,  Michael  de  Montaigne.  Never 
was  there  a  franker  critic  of  James  Boswell,  Esq., 
than  himself;  'the  most  unscottified  of  mortals,'  as 
Johnson  called  him,  has  little  or  none  of  the  reserve 
and  reticence  that  are  generally  supposed  to  be  marks 
of  the  national  character.  A  rare  and  curious  Epistle 
in  Verse,  by  the  Rev.  Samuel  Martin  of  Monimail, 
1795,  touches  on  the  main  points  of  his  life,  and  the 


138  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

author,  who  was  apparently  a  friend  of  Boswell,  had 
learned  '  with  affectionate  concern  and  respect  that  at 
the  end  prayer  was  his  stay/  He  criticises,  in  rather 
halting  and  prosaic  lines, 

1  The  prison  scenes,  his  prying  into  death,. 
How  felons  and  how  saints  resign  their  breath  ; 
How  varying  and  conflicting  passions  roll, 
How  scaffold  exhibitions  shew  the  soul. ' 

He  laments  his  'injurious  hilarity/  his  degrading 
himself  as  '  the  little  bark,  attendant  on  the  huge  all- 
bearing  ark,'  his  political  and  ecclesiastical  aberrations 
from  the  surer  and  better  standpoints  of  his  family  and 
country.  The  feeling  of  this  friend  of  Boswell  would 
represent,  we  cannot  doubt,  the  verdict  at  the  time  of 
his  own  circle. 

The  '  prison  scenes  '  are  an  integral  part  in  BoswelPs 
psychology.  Never  did  George  Selwyn  attend  them 
with  greater  regularity,  or  Wyndham  run  after  prize 
rights  more  assiduously.  In  the  Public  Advertizer, 
April  25,  1768,  we  find  him  writing:  'I  myself  am 
never  absent  from  a  publick  execution.  When  I  first 
attended  them,  I  was  shocked  to  the  greatest  degree 
.  .  .  convulsed  with  pity  and  terror.  I  feel  an 
irresistible  impulse  to  be  present  at  every  execution,  as 
there  I  behold  the  various  effects  of  the  near  approach 
of  death.1  The  parallels  of  Charles  V.,  Philip  II., 
Philip  IV.,  Charles  II.  of  Spain,  will  not  escape  the 
reader,  and  strangely,  or  rather  naturally  enough, 
Boswell  is  found  disagreeing  with  the  censure  pronounced 
by  Johnson  on  the  celebration  of  his  own  obsequies  in 
his  lifetime  by  Charles  V.  In  the  St  Jame?  Gazette  of 
April  20,  1779,  he  is  found  actually  riding  in  the  cart 
to  Tyburn  with  Hackman,  the  murderer  of  Miss  Ray, 
and  writing  to  the  papers  over  the  feeling  of  '  unusual 


JAMES  BOSWELL  139 

Depression  of  Spirits,  joined  with  that  Pause,  which  so 
solemn  a  warning  of  the  dreadful  effects  that  the 
Passion  of  Love  may  produce  must  give  all  of  us  who 
have  lively  Sensations  and  warm  Tempers/  But  he 
suddenly  deviates  into  business  when  he  adds  that  *  it 
is  very  philosophically  explained  and  illustrated  in  the 
Hypochondriack,  a  periodical  Paper,  peculiarly  adapted 
to  the  people  of  England,  and  which  comes  out  monthly 
in  the  London  Magazine,  etc.'  In  his  Corsican  tour 
we  had  seen  him  interviewing  the  executioner  in  the 
island,  and  some  days  before  his  final  parting  with 
Johnson  he  had  witnessed  the  execution  of  fifteen  men 
before  Newgate  and  been  clouded  in  his  mind  by 
doubts  as  to  whether  human  life  was  or  was  not  mere 
machinery  and  a  chain  of  planned  fatality.  These 
cravings  are  clearly  the  marks  of  a  mind  morbidly 
affected  and  diseased,  the  result  of  the  Dutch  marriage 
as  Ramsay  believed.  All  through  his  life  Boswell  is 
conscious  of  his  *  distempered  imagination,'  and  the 
letters  to  Temple  are  scattered  with  irrelevances  and 
repetitions,  fatuities  and  inconsistencies  that  can  be 
explained  only  on  the  score  of  mental  disease.  Were 
any  doubts  possible  on  this  point,  the  expressions  of 
his  opinions  on  religion  would  dispel  them.  His 
*  Popish  imagination,7  quickened  as  it  may  have  been 
by  the  escapade  with  the  actress,  was  but  the  natural 
outcome  of  an  ill-balanced  mind.  His  feelings  about 
consecrated  places,  loca  solennia  such  as  lona,  and 
Wittenberg,  Rasay  and  Carlisle,  we  have  seen.  He 
delighted,  says  Malone,  in  what  he  called  the  mysterious^ 
leading  Johnson  on  ghosts,  and  kindred  subjects.  He 
was  a  believer  in  second  sight :  *  it  pleases  my  super- 
stition,1 he  tells  Temple,  *  which  you  know  is  not 
small,  and  being  not  of  the  gloomy  but  the  grand 
species  is  an  enjoyment/  When  his  uncle  John  died, 


140  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

we  learn  he  was  'a  good  scholar  and  affectionate 
relative,  but  had  no  conduct.  And,  do  you  know,  he 
was  not  confined  to  one  woman ;  he  had  a  strange  kind 
of  religion,  but  I  flatter  myself  he  will  be  ere  long,  if 
he  is  not  already,  in  heaven  ! '  He  comforts  himself 
constantly  over  life  being  a  mere  state  of  purification, 
and  looks  forward  to  a  condition  of  events  in  which  '  a 
man  can  soap  his  own  beard  and  enjoy  whatever  is  to 
be  had  in  this  transitory  state  of  things/  He  is  for  ever 
questioning  Johnson  upon  purgatory,  'having  much 
curiosity  to  know  his  notions  on  that  point/  One  of 
the  last  authentic  glimpses  of  Boswell  is  his  being  found 
in  the  company  of  Wilberforce,  going  west,  with  a  night- 
cap in  his  pocket,  on  some  visit  to  a  friend  such  as 
Miss  Hawkins  says  he  was  but  too  fond  of  doing, — 
'  away  to  the  west  as  the  sun  went  down ' — doubtful 
of  future  punishment,  but  resolute  in  maintaining  the 
depravity  of  man.  It  would  almost  appear  as  if  Bozzy 
had  read  himself  into  Butler's  doctrine  that  our  present 
life  is  a  state  of  probation  for  a  future  one,  but  had 
forgotten  the  qualification  'that  our  future  interest  is 
now  depending  on  ourselves/ 

The  very  influence  of  Johnson  himself  may  have 
affected  the  weaker  mind  of  Boswell  injuriously.  Both 
suffered  from  hypochondria,  though  that  of  the  latter 
was  far  distant  from  the  affliction  of  Johnson  whom  Dr 
Adams  found  'in  a  deplorable  state,  sighing,  groaning, 
talking  to  himself,  and  restlessly  walking  from  room 
to  room.'  Temple  maintained  that  the  effect  of 
Johnson's  company  had  been  of  a  depressing  nature 
to  his  friend,  and  Sir  Wm.  Forbes  believed  that  some 
slight  tincture  of  superstition  had  been  contracted  from 
his  companionship  with  the  sage.  The  '  cloudy  dark- 
ness,' as  he  himself  calls  it,  of  his  mind,  the  weakness 
and  the  confusion  of  moral  principles  manifest  enough 


UNIVERSITY 


JAMES  BOSWELL  141 

in  the  Temple  correspondence,  are  better  revealed  in 
the  conversation  with  Johnson  at  Squire  Dilly's,  'where 
there  is  always  abundance  of  excellent  fare  and  hearty 
welcome.'  'Being  in  a  frame  of  mind  which,  I  hope 
for  the  felicity  of  human  nature,  many  experience, — 
in  fine  weather, — at  the  country-house  of  a  friend, — 
consoled  and  elevated  by  pious  exercises,  I  expressed 
myself  with  an  unrestrained  fervour  to  my  "guide, 
philosopher,  and  friend;"  My  dear  Sir,  I  would  fain 
be  a  good  man ;  and  I  am  very  good  now.  I  fear 
God,  and  honour  the  King ;  I  wish  to  do  no  ill,  and 
to  be  benevolent  to  all  mankind.'  He  looked  at  me 
with  a  benignant  indulgence;  but  took  occasion  to 
give  me  wise  and  salutary  caution.  '  Do  not,  sir, 
accustom  yourself  to  trust  to  impressions?  Boswell 
had  surely  forgotten  all  this  when  he  cries  bitterly  to 
Temple  that  he  was  inclined  to  agree  with  him  in 
thinking  'my  great  oracle  did  allow  too  much  credit 
to  good  principles,  without  good  practice.'  Perhaps 
he  remembered  Johnson's  appreciation  of  Campbell, 
the  good  pious  man  that  never  passed  a  church  without 
pulling  off  his  hat,  all  which  shewed  'he  has  good 
principles.'  Boswell  had,  unfortunately,  been  'caught 
young '  by  the  sceptical  talk  of  Dempster,  Hume,  and 
Wilkes,  and  his  extended  Continental  ramble  had  im- 
paired the  earlier  views  under  which  he  had  been  reared. 
But  James  Boswell  deserves  at  the  hands  of  his 
readers  and  of  critics  better  treatment  than  has  been 
measured  out  to  him  in  the  contemptuous  estimate 
of  Macaulay,  and,  still  worse,  in  the  shrill  attack  of 
the  smaller  brood  'whose  sails  were  never  to  the 
tempest  given,'  but  who  have,  by  the  easy  repetition 
of  a  few  phrases  and  an  imperfect  acquaintance  with 
the  writings  and  character  of  the  man  they  decry, 
come  to  the  complacent  depreciation  which,  as  Niebuhr 


142  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

said,  is  ever  so  dear  to  the  soul  of  mediocrity.  If 
James  Boswell  was  not  like  Goldsmith,  a  great  man, 
as  Johnson  finely  pronounced,  whose  frailties  should 
not  be  remembered,  nor  was,  perhaps,  in  any  final 
sense  a  great  writer,  yet  for  twenty  years  he  had  been 
the  tried  friend  of  the  man  who  at  the  Mitre  had 
called  out  to  him,  '  Give  me  your  hand,  I  have  taken 
a  liking  to  you/  A  plant  that,  like  Goldsmith  also, 
1  flowered  late/  he  has  created  in  literature  and 
biography  a  revolution,  and  produced  a  work  whose 
surpassing  merits  and  value  are  known  the  more  that 
it  is  studied. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

IN    LITERATURE 
'  Eclipse  is  first,  the  rest  nowhere.' — MACAULAY. 

'  How  delicate,  decent  is  English  Biography/  says 
Carlyle,  *  bless  its  mealy  mouth !  A  Damocles  sword 
of  Respectability  hangs  for  ever  over  the  poor  English 
Life-writer  (as  it  does  over  poor  English  Life  in  general), 
and  reduces  him  to  the  verge  of  paralysis.  Thus  it 
has  been  said  there  are  no  English  lives  worth  reading, 
except  those  of  Players,  who  by  the  nature  of  the  case 
have  bidden  Respectability  good-day.  The  English 
biographer  has  long  felt  that,  if  in  writing  his  man's 
biography  he  wrote  down  anything  that  could  by 
possibility  offend  any  man,  he  had  written  wrong/ 
The  biographer,  as  Mr  Froude  found  out  for  a  com- 
mentary on  all  this,  is  placed  between  a  Scylla  and 
Charybdis,  between  what  is  due  to  the  subject,  and 
what  is  expected  by  the  public.  If  something  is  left 
out  of  the  portrait,  the  likeness  will  be  imperfect;  if 
the  anxiety  or  the  inquisitiveness  of  readers  to  know 
private  details  is  left  ungratified,  the  writer  will  be  met 
by  the  current  cant  that  the  public  has  a  right  to  know. 
The  line  is  not  easily  drawn,  and  few  subjects  for  the 
biographer  can  ever  desire  to  be  as  candidly  dealt  with 
by  him  as  Cromwell  acted  with  Sir  Peter  Lely,  in  the 
request  to  be  painted  as  he  was,  warts  and  all.  Thus, 

143 


144  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

too  often  the  result  will  be  but  biography  written  in 
vacuO)  '  the  tragedy  of  Hamlet  with  the  part  of  Hamlet 
omitted — by  particular  desire.' 

Biography,  like  History,  has  suffered  from  considera- 
tions of  dignity  and  propriety.  The  writers  of  the 
Hume  and  Robertson  school  of  history,  in  their 
stately  minuet  with  the  historical  muse,  have  been 
careful  to  exclude  everything  that  seemed  beneath  the 
dignity  of  the  sceptred  pall ;  biographers  have  as  con- 
sciously studied  the  proprieties.  '  The  Muse  of 
history/  says  Thackeray,  c  wears  the  mask  and  speaks 
to  measure ;  she  too  in  our  age  busies  herself  with  the 
affairs  only  of  kings.  I  wonder  shall  history  ever  pull 
off  her  periwig  and  cease  to  be  Court-ridden?  I 
would  have  History  familiar  rather  than  heroic,  and 
think  that  Mr  Hogarth  and  Mr  Fielding  will  give  our 
children  a  much  better  idea  of  the  manners  of  the 
present  age  in  England,  than  the  Court  Gazette  and 
the  newspapers  which  we  get  thence.1  As  the 
historian  has  striven  to  obscure  the  real  nature  of 
the  Grand  Monarque,  by  confining  his  action  to 
courts  and  battlefields,  so  the  biographer,  in  his  desire 
of  never  stepping  beyond  the  proper,  has  enveloped 
his  hero  in  a  circle  of  correct  ideas,  after  the  manner 
of  George  the  Fourth  and  his  multiplicity  of  waist- 
coats. Dignity  and  respectability  have  ruined  alike 
the  historian  and  the  biographer. 

Lockhart  foresaw  that  some  readers  would  accuse 
him  of  trenching  upon  delicacy  and  propriety  over  his 
sixth  and  seventh  chapters  in  the  Life  of  Scott,  and 
the  circumstances  were  after  all  such  as,  had  choice 
been  permitted  him,  he  might  easily  have  omitted, 
considering  it  his  duty  to  tell  what  he  had  to  say 
truly  and  intelligibly.  Of  all  men  Macaulay  had 
nothing  to  fear  from  any  rational  biography  that  should 


JAMES  BOSWELL  145 

ever  be  written  of  him,  yet  has  not  Mr  Trevelyan 
assured  his  readers  that  the  reviewers  had  told  him, 
that  he  would  much  better  have  consulted  his  uncle's 
reputation  by  the  omission  of  passages  in  his  letters 
and  diaries  ?  Such  criticism,  as  he  justly  says,  is  to 
seriously  misconceive  the  province  and  the  duty  of  the 
biographer,  and  his  justification  is  that  the  reading 
world  has  long  extended  to  the  man  the  just  approba- 
tion which  it  so  heartily  extended  to  his  books.  The 
Latin  critics  assigned  history, — and  accordingly  history 
in  miniature,  biography, — to  the  department  of  oratory. 
The  feeling,  in  consequence,  has  long  prevailed  of  re- 
garding biography  as  the  field  for  the  display  of  every 
other  feeling  then  veracity.  It  has  been  emotional, 
or  it  has  been  decorously  dull.  To  all  such  writers 
the  style  adopted  by  Boswell  would  appear,  and  justly 
appear,  revolutionary.  The  cry  is  raised  of  there  being 
nothing  sacred,  of  the  violation  of  domestic  privacy, 
of  the  sanctities  of  life  being  endangered,  of  indiscre- 
tions, and  violations  of  confidences,  by  the  biographer. 
Accordingly,  just  as  Macaulay  decided  that,  in  general, 
tragedy  was  corrupted  by  eloquence,  and  comedy  by 
wit,  so  biography  and  history  have  suffered  from  the 
dignity  of  Clio.  Boswell  was  perfectly  aware  what  he 
was  doing,  nor  did  he  awake  to  find  himself  famous 
for  a  method  into  which  the  sciolists  pretend  he  only 
unconsciously  blundered.  In  the  preface  to  the  third 
edition  of  the  Journal  he  writes  : — '  Remarks  have 
been  industriously  circulated  in  the  publick  prints  by 
shallow  or  envious  cavillers,  who  have  endeavoured  to 
persuade  the  world  that  Dr  Johnson's  character  has 
been  lessened  by  recording  such  various  instances  of 
his  lively  wit  and  acute  judgment,  on  every  topick 
that  was  presented  to  his  mind.  In  the  opinion  of 
every  person  of  taste  and  knowledge  that  I  have  con- 


146  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

versed  with,  it  has  been  greatly  heightened ;  and  I 
will  venture  to  predict,  that  this  specimen  of  his 
colloquial  talents  will  become  still  more  valuable, 
when,  by  the  lapse  of  time,  he  shall  have  become  an 
ancient ;  and  no  other  memorial  of  this  great  and 
good  man  shall  remain  but  the  following  Journal/ 
This  is  not  the  writing  of  one  who  has  been  without 
a  clear  idea  of  what  he  was  undertaking,  and  of  his 
own  qualifications  for  the  task.  'You,  my  dear  sir/ 
he  tells  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  in  the  dedication,  '  per- 
ceived all  the  shades  which  mingled  in  the  grand  com- 
position ;  all  the  peculiarities  and  slight  blemishes 
which  marked  the  literary  Colossus/  The  inclusion 
of  the  letters  and  of  private  details  was  an  integral 
part  of  his  scheme.  When  he  introduced  the  subject 
of  biography  at  Dr  Taylor's,  no  doubt  with  his  own 
book  in  his  eye,  he  said  that  in  writing  a  man's  life 
the  man's  peculiarities  should  be  mentioned  because 
they  mark  his  character.  When  he  resolved  on  their 
publication,  he  thought  it  right  to  ask  Johnson  ex- 
plicitly on  this  point,  and  the  reply  was  what  in  1773 
the  doctor  had  given  to  Macleod  in  Skye,  when  he 
had  asked  if  Orrery  had  done  wrong,  to  expose  the 
defects  of  Swift  with  whom  he  had  lived  in  terms  of 
intimacy.  '  Why,  no,  sir,'  Johnson  had  decided,  '  after 
the  man  is  dead,  for  then  it  is  done  historically.' 
A  biographer  that  would  omit  or  disguise  the  relations 
of  Nelson  to  Lady  Hamilton,  would  be  justly  suspected 
of  disingenuousness,  and  Lockhart,  especially  in  his 
treatment  of  the  political  side  of  his  subject, — for 
example  in  the  notorious  Beacon  incident — is  but  too 
open  to  this  charge.  But  disingenuousness  is  a  charge 
that  never  could  have  occurred  to  Boswell,  whose 
veracity  is  the  prime  quality  that  has  made  him  im- 
mortal. When  the  Journal  was  in  the  press,  Hannah 


JAMES  BOSWELL  147 

More,  studious  of  the  name  of  the  moralist  and  the 
sage,  '  besought  him  to  mitigate  his  asperities.'  c  I  will 
not,'  said  Boswell  roughly,  but  wisely  for  posterity,  c  cut 
off  his  claws,  nor  make  a  tiger  a  cat  to  please  anyone.' 

BoswelPs  books  are  veritable  books.  Few  books 
have  had  such  a  severe  test  applied  to  them.  His 
first  was  dedicated  to  Paoli,  whose  sanction  must  be 
taken  to  guarantee  every  line  of  it.  "  In  every  narra- 
tive," he  writes  in  the  dedication  to  Malone  of  the 
Journal,  "  whether  historical  or  biographical,  authenticity 
is  of  the  utmost  consequence.  Of  this  I  have  ever 
been  so  firmly  persuaded  that  I  inscribed  a  former 
work  to  that  person  who  was  the  best  judge  of  its 
truth.  Of  this  work  the  manuscript  was  daily  read  by 
Johnson,  and  you  have  perused  the  original  and  can 
vouch  for  the  strict  fidelity  of  the  present  publication." 
His  Life  of  Johnson  was  as  fearlessly  dedicated  to  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,  one  whose  intimacy  with  Johnson 
could  stamp,  with  assured  knowledge  of  the  subject, 
the  credit  and  success  of  the  work.  Among  the  '  some 
dozen,  or  baker's  dozen,  and  those  chiefly  of  very 
ancient  date,'  of  reliable  biographies  whose  paucity 
Carlyle  laments,  the  works  of  Boswell  may  be  safely 
included.  Their  accuracy  is  confessed  by  workers  in 
all  fields.  His  Tour  created  a  type  ;  no  better  volume 
of  travels  has  ever  been  written  than  the  Journal ;  and 
the  critic  who  has  dealt  at  the  reputation  of  Boswell  its 
heaviest  blow  has  yet  to  confess,  that  Homer  is  no  more 
the  first  of  poets,  Shakespeare  the  first  of  dramatists, 
Demosthenes  the  first  of  orators,  than  Boswell  is  the 
first  of  biographers,  with  no  second. 

How  is  this?  Written  in  1831,  before  Lockhart 
Southey  and  Carlyle  by  their  biographies  of  Scott, 
Nelson,  and  Frederick  had  appeared  as  rivals,  why  is  it 
no  less  true  now?  What  singular  gift  or  quality  can 


148  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

account  for  this  singular  aloofness  from  the  ordinary  or 
extraordinary  class  of  writers  ?  Why  does  Boswell  yet 
wear  the  crown  of  indivisible  supremacy  in  biography  ? 
His  own  words  will  not  explain  it,  the  possession  of 
Johnson's  intimacy,  the  twenty  years'  view  of  his  subject, 
his  faculty  for  recollecting,  and  his  assiduity  in  recording 
communications.  This  and  more  than  this  Lockhart 
possessed,  the  nearest  rival  to  the  biographical  throne. 
He  was  the  son-in-law  of  his  subject,  for  whom  he  had 
as  true  an  admiration  as  Boswell  had  for  Johnson.  But 
Boswell  was  only  in  the  company  of  his  idol  some  180 
days,  or  276  if  we  include  the  time  on  the  tour  in 
Scotland,  in  all  the  twenty  years  of  his  acquaintance. 
Lockhart  had  the  journals  of  Sir  Walter,  and  the  com- 
munications of  nearly  a  hundred  persons.  A  comparison 
in  any  sense,  literary,  social,  or  moral,  would  have  been 
felt  by  Lockhart  as  an  insult,  for  he  clearly  regards  Sir 
Alexander  Boswell  as  a  greater  man  than  his  father. 
But  if,  like  the  grandsire  of  Hubert  at  Hastings, 
Lockhart  has  drawn  a  good  bow,  Boswell,  like  the 
Locksley  of  the  novelist,  has  notched  his  shaft,  and 
comparisons  have  long  ceased  to  be  instituted.  Gray 
has  attempted  the  explanation — a  fool  with  a  note-book. 
He  has  invented  nothing,  he  has  only  reported.  But 
every  year  sees  that  person  at  work,  with  his  First 
Impressions  of  Brittany ',  Three  Weeks  in  Greece,  and  the 
everlasting  Tour  in  Tartanland.  These  are  the 
creations  of  the  note-book,  but  it  has  given  them  no 
permanence.  The  tourist  puts  in  everything  he  sees, 
truly  enough,  or  thinks  he  sees.  But  it  is  the  art  of 
Boswell  to  select  c  the  characteristical,'  and  the  typical, 
to  group  and  to  dramatize.  Ninety-four  days  he  spent 
on  the  northern  tour,  and  the  result  is  a  masterpiece. 
Pepys  is  garrulous,  often  vulgar,  always  lower-middle- 
class  ;  but  Boswell  writes  like  a  gentleman. 


JAMES  BOSWELL  149 

Macaulay  has  explained  it  by  a  paradox.  Goldsmith 
was  great  in  spite  of  his  weaknesses,  Boswell  by  reason 
of  his ;  if  he  had  not  been  a  great  fool,  he  would  never 
have  been  a  great  writer.  He  was  a  dunce,  a  parasite, 
a  coxcomb,  a  Paul  Pry,  had  a  quick  observation,  a 
retentive  memory,  and  accordingly — he  has  become 
immortal !  Alas  for  the  paucity  of  such  immortals 
under  so  common  circumstances ;  their  number  should 
be  legion  !  That  a  fool  may  occasionally  write 
interesting  matter  we  know;  but  that  a  man  should 
write  a  literary  classic,  graced  by  arrangement,  selection, 
expression,  is  not  even  paradox  but  hyperbole  run  mad. 
The  truth  is,  Macaulay  had  no  eye  for  such  a  complex 
character  as  Boswell.  Too  correct  himself,  too  prone 
to  the  cardinal  virtues  and  consistency,  to  follow  one 
who,  by  instinct,  seemed  to  anticipate  Wendell  Holmes' 
advice — '  Don't  be  consistent,  but  be  simply  true ' — 
and  too  sound  politically  in  the  field  where  Boswell  and 
the  doctor  abased  themselves  in  absurd  party  spirit, 
Macaulay  can  no  more  understand  sympathetically  the 
vagaries  of  Boswell  than  Mommsen  or  Drumann  can 
follow  the  political  inconsistency  of  Cicero.  He  had  no 
Boswellian  '  delight  in  that  intellectual  chemistry  which 
can  separate  good  qualities  from  evil  in  the  same 
person ; '  and  in  his  essay  on  Milton  he  has  disclaimed 
explicitly  all  such  hero-worship  of  the  living  or  the 
dead  and  denounced  Boswellism  as  the  most  certain 
mark  of  an  ill-regulated  intellect.  Nor  had  he,  or 
Carlyle  either,  before  him  the  evidence  of  the  letters 
to  Temple. 

Carlyle,  in  the  theory  of  hero-worship,  has  made 
capital  use  of  Boswell.  He  sees  the  strong  mind  of 
Johnson  leading  '  the  poor  flimsy  little  soul '  of  James 
Boswell ;  he  feels  '  the  devout  Discipleship,  the  gyrating 
observantly  round  the  great  constellation.'  He  has 


ISO  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

BoswelFs  reiterated  declarations  to  support  him.  On 
one  side  Carlyle's  vindication  of  the  biographer  is 
successful;  he  errs  in  emphasizing  the  discovery  by 
Boswell  of  the  Rambler.  In  such  a  discovery  Langton 
and  Beauclerk  had  long  preceded  him,  and  the  Johnson 
that  Boswell  met  in  Davies'  parlour  was  the  pensioned 
writer  who  had  out-lived  his  dark  days,  and  was  the 
literary  dictator  of  the  day,  and  the  associate  of  Burke 
and  of  Reynolds.  But  Carlyle  comes  nearer  the  truth 
when  he  touches  on  the  Boswellian  recipe  for  being 
graphic — the  possession  of  an  open,  loving  heart,  and 
what  follows  from  the  possession  of  such.  Like  White 
of  Selborne,  with  his  sparrows  and  cockchafers,  Bos- 
well, too,  has  copied  some  true  sentences  from  the 
inspired  book  of  nature. 

But  however  this  may  account  for  his  insight — the 
heart  seeing  farther  than  the  head — it  will  not  account 
for  his  literary  qualities.  Of  all  his  contemporaries, 
Goldsmith  and  Burke  excepted,  no  one  is  a  greater 
master  of  a  pure  prose  style  than  Boswell,  and  for  ease 
of  narrative,  felicity  of  phrase,  and  rounded  diction  he  is 
incomparable.  Macaulay  believed  a  London  apprentice 
could  detect  Scotticisms  in  Robertson ;  Hume's  style  is 
often  vicious  by  Gallicisms  and  Scots  law  phrases  which 
nothing  but  his  expository  gifts  have  obscured  from  the 
critics.  Beattie  confesses  learning  English  as  a  dead 
language  and  taking  several  years  over  the  task.  But 
Boswell,  *  scarce  by  North  Britons  now  esteemed  a 
Scot,'  writes  with  an  ease  that  renders  his  style  his 
own.  '  The  fact  is/  says  Mr  Cotter  Morison,  *  that 
no  dramatist  or  novelist  of  the  whole  century  sur- 
passed or  even  equalled  Boswell  in  rounded  and 
clear  and  picturesque  presentation,  or  in  real  dramatic 
faculty.' 

Let  us  take  one  portrait  from  the  Boswell  gallery — 


JAMES  BOSWELL  151 

the  meeting  of  the  two  old  Pembroke  men,  Johnson  and 
Oliver  Edwards. 

'It  was  in  Butcher  Row  that  this  meeting  happened.  Mr 
Edwards,  who  was  a  decent-looking  elderly  man  in  gray  clothes 
and  a  wig  of  many  curls,  accosted  Johnson  with  familiar  confidence, 
knowing  who  he  was,  while  Johnson  returned  his  salutation  with  a 
courteous  formality,  as  to  a  stranger.  But  as  soon  as  Edwards  had 
brought  to  his  recollection  their  having  been  at  Pembroke  College 
together  nine-and-forty  years  ago,  he  seemed  much  pleased,  asked 
where  he  lived,  and  said  he  should  be  glad  to  see  him  in  Bolt 
Court.  EDWARDS  :  "  Ah,  sir  1  we  are  old  men  now."  JOHNSON 
(who  never  liked  to  think  of  being  old) :  "Don't  let  us  discourage 
one  another."  EDWARDS:  "Why,  Doctor,  you  look  stout  and 
hearty.  I  am  happy  to  see  you  so ;  for  the  newspapers  told  us  you 
were  very  ill."  JOHNSON:  "Ay,  sir,  they  are  always  telling  lies 
of  us  old  fellows." 

Wishing  to  be  present  at  more  of  so  singular  a  conversation  as 
that  between  two  fellow  collegians,  who  had  lived  forty  years  in 
London  without  ever  having  chanced  to  meet,  I  whispered  to  Mr 
Edwards  that  Dr  Johnson  was  going  home,  and  that  he  had  better 
accompany  him  now.  So  Edwards  walked  along  with  us,  I  eagerly 
assisting  to  keep  up  the  conversation.  Mr  Edwards  informed  Dr 
Johnson  that  he  had  practised  long  as  a  solicitor  in  Chancery.  .  .  . 
When  we  got  to  Dr  Johnson's  house  and  were  seated  in  his  library, 
the  dialogue  went  on  admirably.  EDWARDS  :  "  Sir,  I  remember 
you  would  not  let  us  say  prodigious  at  College.  For  even  then, 
sir  (turning  to  me),  he  was  delicate  in  language,  and  we  all  feared 
him."  JOHNSON  (to  Edwards) :  "  From  your  having  practised  the 
law  long,  sir,  I  presume  you  must  be  rich."  EDWARDS:  "No, 
sir ;  I  had  a  good  deal  of  money ;  but  I  had  a  number  of  poor 
relations  to  whom  I  gave  great  part  of  it."  JOHNSON  :  "Sir,  you 
have  been  rich  in  the  most  valuable  sense  of  the  word. "  EDWARDS  : 
11  But  I  shall  not  die  rich."  JOHNSON  :  "  Nay,  sure,  sir,  it  is  better 
to  live  rich,  than  to  die  rich."  EDWARDS:  "I  wish  I  had 
continued  at  College."  JOHNSON  :  "Why  do  you  wish  that,  sir?" 
EDWARDS  :  "  Because  I  think  I  should  have  had  a  much  easier  life 
than  mine  has  been.  I  should  have  been  a  parson,  and  had  a  good 
living,  like  Bloxam  and  several  others,  and  lived  comfortably." 


152  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

JOHNSON  :  "  Sir,  the  life  of  a  parson,  of  a  conscientious  clergyman, 
is  not  easy.  I  have  always  considered  a  clergyman  as  the  father  of 
a  larger  family  than  he  is  able  to  maintain.  I  would  rather  have 
Chancery  suits  upon  my  hands  than  the  cure  of  souls."  Here, 
taking  himself  up  all  of  a  sudden,  he  exclaimed,  "O!  Mr 
Edwards  !  I'll  convince  you  that  I  recollect  you.  Do  you  remember 
our  drinking  together  at  an  ale-house  near  Pembroke  Gate  ?  "  .  .  . 
EDWARDS:  "You  are  a  philosopher,  Dr  Johnson.  I  have  tried 
too  in  my  time  to  be  a  philosopher ;  but,  I  don't  know  how, 
cheerfulness  was  always  breaking  in." — Mr  Burke,  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds,  Mr  Courtenay,  Mr  Malone,  and,  indeed,  all  the 
eminent  men  to  whom  I  have  mentioned  this,  have  thought  it  an 
exquisite  trait  of  character.  The  truth  is,  that  philosophy,  like 
religion,  is  too  generally  supposed  to  be  hard  and  severe,  at  least 
so  grave  as  to  exclude  all  gaiety.  EDWARDS  :  "I  have  been  twice 
married,  Doctor.  You,  I  suppose,  have  never  known  what  it  was 
to  have  a  wife."  JOHNSON  :  "  Sir,  I  have  known  what  it  was  to 
have  a  wife,  and  (in  a  solemn,  tender,  faltering  tone)  I  have  known 
what  it  was  to  lose  a  wife.  It  had  almost  broke  my  heart. " 

EDWARDS  :  "  How  do  you  live,  sir?  For  my  part,  I  must  have 
my  regular  meals,  and  a  glass  of  good  wine.  I  find  I  require  it." 
JOHNSON  :  "  I  now  drink  no  wine,  sir.  Early  in  life  I  drank  wine  : 
for  many  years  I  drank  none,  I  then  for  some  years  drank  a  great 
deal ."  EDWARDS  :  ' '  Some  hogsheads,  I  warrant  you. "  JOHNSON  : 
*  *  I  then  had  a  severe  illness,  and  left  it  off.  I  am  a  straggler.  I 
may  leave  this  town  and  go  to  Grand  Cairo,  without  being  missed 
here  or  observed  there."  EDWARDS  :  "  Don't  you  eat  supper,  sir  ?  " 
JOHNSON  :  "  No,  sir."  EDWARDS  :  "  For  my  part,  now,  I  consider 
supper  as  a  turnpike  through  which  one  must  pass,  in  order  to  get 
to  bed."  JOHNSON  :  "You  are  a  lawyer,  Mr  Edwards.  Lawyers 
know  life  practically.  A  bookish  man  should  always  have  them  to 
converse  with.  They  have  what  he  wants."  EDWARDS  :  "  I  am 
grown  old,  I  am  sixty-five."  JOHNSON  :  "I  shall  be  sixty-eight 
next  birthday.  Come,  sir,  drink  water,  and  put  in  for  a  hundred." 
,  ,  .  Mr  Edwards,  when  going  away,  again  recurred  to  his 
consciousness  of  senility,  and  looking  full  in  Johnson's  face,  said  to 
him,  "  You'll  find  in  Dr  Young, 

1 0  my  coevals  !  remnants  of  yourselves.' 


JAMES  BOSWELL  153 

Johnson  did  not  relish  this  at  all ;  but  shook  his  head  with 
impatience.  Edwards  walked  off  seemingly  highly  pleased  with 
the  honour  of  having  been  thus  noticed  by  Dr  Johnson.  When 
he  was  gone,  I  said  to  Johnson  I  thought  him  but  a  weak  man. 
JOHNSON  :  "  Why,  yes,  sir.  Here  is  a  man  who  has  passed  through 
life  without  experience  :  yet  I  would  rather  have  him  with  me  than 
a  more  sensible  man  who  will  not  talk  readily.  This  man  is  always 
willing  to  say  what  he  has  to  say." ' 

How  admirable  is  the  art  in  this  scene,  how  numerous 
and  fine  are  the  strokes  of  character,  and  the  easy  turn 
of  the  dialogue  !  No  fool  with  a  note-book,  no  tippling 
reporter,  as  the  shallow  critics  say,  could  have  written 
this.  To  them  there  would  have  appeared  in  a  chance 
meeting  of  two  old  men  nothing  worthy  of  notice,  yet 
how  dramatically  does  Boswell  touch  off  the  Philistine 
side  of  Edwards,  and  insert  the  fine  shading  and  the 
inimitable  remarks  about  the  setting  up  for  the  philo- 
sopher, and  supper  being  a  turnpike  to  bed  !  This  art 
of  the  biographer  is  what  gives  a  memorableness  to 
slight  incidents,  by  the  object  being  real  and  really  seen; 
it  is  the  *  infinitude  of  delineation,  the  intensity  of 
conception  which  informs  the  Finite  with  a  certain 
Infinitude  of  significance,  ennobling  the  Actual  into 
Idealness.1 

Openness  of  mind  will  do  much,  but  there  must  be 
the  seeing  eye  behind  it.  For  the  mental  development 
of  Boswell,  there  is  no  doubt  that,  as  with  Goldsmith, 
his  foreign  travels  had  done  much.  As  Addison  in  the 
Freeholder  had  recommended  foreign  travel  to  the  fox- 
hunting Tory  squires  of  his  day  as  a  purge  for  their 
provincial  ideas,  Boswell  shares  with  the  author  of  the 
Traveller  and  the  Deserted  Village  cosmopolitan  in- 
stincts and  feelings.  *  I  have  always  stood  up  for  the 
Irish/  he  writes,  '  in  whose  fine  country  I  have  been 
hospitably  and  jovially  entertained,  and  with  whom  I 


i54  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

feel  myself  to  be  congenial.  In  my  Tour  in  Corsica  I 
do  generous  justice  to  the  Irish,  in  opposition  to  the 
English  and  Scots.'  Again,  'I  am,  I  flatter  myself, 
completely  a  citizen  of  the  world.  In  my  travels  through 
Holland,  Germany,  Switzerland,  Italy,  Corsica,  France, 
I  never  felt  myself  from  home;  and  I  sincerely  love 
every  kindred,  and  tongue,  and  people,  and  nation.' 
This  is  the  very  antithesis  to  Johnson,  whose  frank 
confession  was,  '  for  anything  that  I  can  see,  foreigners 
are  fools.' 

Yet  Boswell's  stock  of  learning  was  small.  '  I  have 
promised,' he  writes  in  1775,  'to  Dr  Johnson  to  read 
when  I  get  to  Scotland;  and  to  keep  an  account  of 
what  I  read.  He  is  to  buy  for  me  a  chest  of  books, 
of  his  choosing,  off  stalls,  and  I  am  to  read  more,  and 
drink  less — that  was  his  counsel.'  The  death  of  his 
wife  forces  the  confession,  *  how  much  do  I  regret  that 
I  have  not  applied  myself  more  to  learning,'  and  he 
acknowledges  to  their  common  friend  Langton  that,  if 
Johnson  had  said  that  Bos  well  and  himself  did  not 
talk  from  books,  this  was  because  he  had  not  read 
books  enough  to  talk  from  them.  In  his  manuscripts 
there  are  many  misspellings.  He  assigns  to  Terence  a 
Horatian  line  and,  in  a  letter  to  Garrick,  quotes  as 
Horatian  the  standard  mens  sana  in  corpore  sano  of 
Juvenal.  More  strange  is  his  quoting  in  a  note  an 
illustration  of  the  phrase  *  Vexing  thoughts,'  without  his 
being  apparently  aware  that  the  words  are  by  Rous  of 
Pembroke,  the  Provost  of  Eton,  whose  portrait  in  the 
college  hall  he  must  often  have  seen,  the  writer  of  the 
Scottish  Metrical  Version  of  the  Psalms.  Yet  his 
intellectual  interests  were  keen.  Late  in  life  he  has 
'done  a  little  at  Greek;  Lord  Monboddo's  Ancient 
Metaphysics  which  I  am  reading  carefully  helps  me  to 
recover  the  language.'  He  has  his  little  scraps  of  irritat- 


JAMES  BOSWELL  155 

ing  Latinity  which  he  loves  to  parade,  and  when  he 
dined  at  Eton,  at  the  fellows'  table,  he  cmade  a  con- 
siderable figure,  having  certainly  the  art  of  making  the 
most  of  what  I  know.  I  had  my  classical  quotations 
very  ready.'  Besides,  the  easy  allusiveness  of  Boswell  to 
books  and  to  matters  beyond  the  scope  of  general 
readers,  his  interest  in  all  things  going  forward  in  the 
Johnsonian  circle,  his  shewing  himself  in  some  meta- 
physical points — predestination,  for  example — fully  a 
match  for  Johnson,  and  his  own  words  in  the  Journal — 
'  he  had  thought  more  than  anybody  supposed,  and 
had  a  pretty  good  stock  of  general  learning  and  know- 
ledge'— all  conspire  to  shew  that,  if  he  had  no  more 
learning  than  what  he  could  not  help,  James  Boswell 
was  altogether,  as  Dominie  Sampson  said  of  Mannering, 
*a  man  of  considerable  erudition  despite  of  his  im- 
perfect opportunities.' 

Nor  were  his  entire  interests  Johnsonian.  Scattered 
through  his  writings  we  find  allusions  to  other  books, 
in  a  more  or  less  forward  stage  of  completeness,  and  of 
which  some  must  have  been  destroyed  by  his  faithless 
executors.  We  hear  of  a  Life  of  Lord  Kames ;  an 
Essay  on  the  Profession  of  an  Advocate;  Memoirs  of 
Hume  when  dying,  '  which  I  may  some  time  or  other 
communicate  to  the  world;'  a  quarto  with  plates  on 
The  Beggars  Opera ;  a  History  of  James  IV.,  ( the 
patron  of  my  family;'  a  Collection  of  Feudal  Tenures 
and  Charters,  'a  valuable  collection  made  by  my 
father,  with  some  additions  and  illustrations  of  my 
own ; '  an  Account  of  my  Travels,  '  for  which  I  had  a 
variety  of  materials  collected ; '  a  Life  of  Sir  Robert 
Sibbald,  'in  the  original  manuscript  in  his  own  writ- 
ing ; '  a  History  of  the  Rebellion  of  1745;  an  edition  of 
Walton's  Lives;  a  Life  of  Thomas  Ruddiman,  the  Latin 
grammarian ;  a  History  of  Sweden,  where  three  of  his 


156  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

ancestors  had  settled,  who  took  service  under  Gustavus 
Adolphus ;  an  edition  of  Johnson's  Poems,  *  a  complete 
edition,  in  which  I  shall  with  the  utmost  care  ascertain 
their  authenticity,  and  illustrate  them  with  notes  and 
various  readings ; '  a  work  on  Addisorfs  Poems,  in 
which  *  I  shall  probably  maintain  the  merit  of  Addison's 
poetry,  which  has  been  very  unjustly  depreciated.1 
His  Journal,  which  is  unfortunately  lost,  he  designed 
as  the  material  for  his  own  Autobiography.  A  goodly 
list,  and  a  varied  one,  involving  interest,  knowledge, 
and  research,  fit  to  form  the  equipment  of  a  professed 
scholar. 

Boswell  foresaw  the  danger,  and  he  justified  his  method 
of  reporting  conversations.  *  It  may  be  objected  by  some 
persons,  as  it  has  been  by  one  of  my  friends,  that  he  who 
has  the  power  of  thus  exhibiting  an  exact  transcript  of 
conversations  is  not  a  desirable  member  of  society.  I 
repeat  the  answer  which  I  made  to  that  friend : — 
'Few,  very  few,  need  be  afraid  that  their  sayings  will 
be  recorded.  Can  it  be  imagined  that  I  would  take 
the  trouble  to  gather  what  grows  on  every  hedge, 
because  I  have  collected  such  fruits  as  the  Nonpareil 
and  the  Bon  Chretien  ?  On  the  other  hand,  how 
useful  is  such  a  faculty,  if  well  exercised !  To  it  we 
owe  all  those  interesting  apophthegms  and  memorabilia 
of  the  ancients,  which  Plutarch,  Xenophon,  and  Valerius 
Maximus,  have  transmitted  to  us.  To  it  we  owe  all 
those  instructive  and  entertaining  collections  which  the 
French  have  made  under  the  title  of  Ana,  affixed  to 
some  celebrated  name.  To  it  we  owe  the  Table-Talk 
of  Selden,  the  Conversation  between  Ben  Jonson  and 
Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  Spence's  Anecdotes  of 
Pope,  and  other  valuable  remains  in  our  own  language. 
How  delighted  should  we  have  been,  if  thus  introduced 
into  the  company  of  Shakespeare  and  of  Dryden,  of 


JAMES  BOSWELL  157 

whom  we  know  scarcely  anything  but  their  admirable 
writings  !  What  pleasure  would  it  have  given  us,  to 
have  known  their  petty  habits,  their  characteristick 
manners,  their  modes  of  composition,  and  their  genuine 
opinion  of  preceding  writers  and  of  their  contempo- 
raries ! ' 

The  world  in  consideration  of  what  it  has  gained, 
and  the  recollection  of  what  we  should  have  acquired 
had  such  a  reporter  been  found  for  the  talk  of  other 
great  men,  has  long  since  forgiven  Boswell,  and  for- 
gotten also  his  baiting  the  doctor  with  questions  on  all 
points,  his  rebuffs  and  his  puttings  down — *  there  is 
your  want,  sir ;  I  will  not  be  put  to  the  question ; '  his 
watching  '  every  dawning  of  communication  from  that 
illuminated  mind ; '  his  eyes  goggling  with  eagerness, 
the  mouth  dropt  open  to  catch  every  syllable,  his  ear 
almost  on  the  shoulder  of  the  doctor,  and  the  final 
burst  of  *  what  do  you  do  there,  sir, — go  to  the  table, 
sir, — come  back  to  your  place,  sir.' 

And  these  conversations  which  he  reported  in  his 
short-hand,  yet  *  so  as  to  keep  the  substance  and  lan- 
guage of  discourse  ? '  How  far  did  he  Johnsonize  the 
form  or  matter  ?  The  remark  by  Burke  to  Mackintosh, 
that  Johnson  was  greater  in  BoswelFs  books  than  in 
his  own,  the  absence  of  the  terse  and  artistic  touch  to 
the  sayings  of  the  Rambler  in  the  pages  of  Hawkins, 
Thrale,  Murphy  and  others,  suggest  inevitably  that  they 
have  been  touched  up  by  their  reporter.  The  Boswell- 
iana  supplies  here  some  slight  confirmation  of  this,  for 
there  have  been  preserved  in  that  collection  stories  that 
reappear  in  the  Life,  and  the  final  form  in  which  they 
appear  in  the  later  book  is  always  that  of  a  pointed 
and  improved  nature.  It  would,  therefore,  seem  that 
Boswell,  whose  imitations  of  Johnson  Mrs  Thrale 
declared  in  some  respects  superior  to  Garrick's,  in  his 


158  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

long  devotion  to  the  style  and  manner  of  his  friend, 
inflated  with  the  Johnsonian  ether/  did  consciously 
or  otherwise  add  much  to  the  originals,  and  so  has 
denied  himself  a  share  of  what  would  otherwise  be 
justly,  if  known,  set  down  to  his  credit. 

'  I  own/  he  writes  in  1789  to  Temple,  'I  am  desirous 
that  my  life  should  tell.'  He  counted  doubtless  on  the 
Autobiography  for  this  purpose.  *  It  is  a  maxim  with 
me/  said  the  great  Bentley,  'that  no  man  was  ever 
written  out  of  reputation  but  by  himself/  At  first  sight 
it  would  appear  that  Boswell  had  inflicted  upon  his 
own  fame  an  indelible  blot.  From  whom  but  himself 
should  we  ever  have  learned  those  failings,  of  which 
Macaulay  has  deftly  made  so  much  in  his  unsympathetic 
writing  down  of  the  man,  after  the  manner  of  the 
Johnsonian  attack  on  Milton  and  Gray  ?  In  whom  but 
himself  should  we  detect  the  excrescences  in  his  works 
— the  permutations  and  combinations  in  shaving,  the 
wish  for  a  pulley  in  bed  to  raise  him,  his  puzzle  over 
the  disproportionate  wages  of  footmen  and  maid- 
servants, his  boastings,  his  family  pride,  his  hastily  writ- 
ing in  the  sage's  presence  Johnson's  parody  of  Hervey 
in  the  Meditations  on  a  Pudding^  his  superstitions,  and 
his  weaknesses  ?  It  is  this  that  has  cost  him  so  dear 
with  the  critics,  and  the  superior  people,  *  empty  weari- 
some cuckoos,  and  doleful  monotonous  owls,  innumer- 
able jays  also  and  twittering  sparrows  of  the  housetops.' 
He  compares  his  own  ideas  to  his  handwriting,  irregular 
and  sprawling;  his  nature  to  Corinthian  brass,  made 
up  of  an  infinite  variety  of  ingredients,  and  his  head  to 
a  tavern  which  might  have  been  full  of  lords  drinking 
Burgundy,  but  has  been  invaded  by  low  punch-drinkers 
whom  the  landlord  cannot  expel.  Blots  and  inequalities 
there  are  in  the  great  book.  Cooper  off  the  prairie, 
Gait  out  of  Ayrshire,  are  not  more  untrue  to  themselves 


JAMES  BOS  WELL  159 

than  is  Boswell  at  such  moments.  But  *  within  the  focus 
of  the  Lichfield  lamps '  he  regains  his  strength  like  a 
Samson. 

Boswell,  with  all  his  experience,  never  attained  the 
mellow  Sadduceeism  of  the  diner-out.  As  a  reward, 
he  never  lost  the  literary  conscience,  the  capacity  for 
labour,  the  assiduity  and  veracity  that  have  set  his 
work  upon  a  pedestal  of  its  own.  The  dedication  to 
Reynolds,  a  masterly  piece  of  writing,  will  shew  the 
trouble  that  he  took  over  his  method,  '  obliged  to  run 
half  over  London  in  order  to  fix  a  date  correctly/ 
And  he  knew  the  value  of  his  work,  which  the  man 
with  the  note-book  never  does.  In  his  moments  of 
self-complacency  he  could  compare  his  Johnsoniad 
with  the  Odyssey ;  and  he  will  not  repress  his  'satis- 
faction in  the  consciousness  of  having  largely  provided 
for  the  instruction  and  entertainment  of  mankind.' 
Literary  models  before  him  he  had  none.  Scott 
suggests  the  life  of  the  philosopher  Demophon  in 
Lucian,  but  Boswell  was  not  likely  to  have  known  it. 
He  modestly  himself  says  he  has  enlarged  on  the  plan 
of  Mason's  Life  of  Gray ;  but  his  merits  are  his  own. 
For  the  history  of  the  period  it  is,  as  Cardinal  Duperron 
said  of  Rabelais,  le  livre — the  book — 'in  worth  as  a 
book,'  decides  Carlyle,  'beyond  any  other  production 
of  the  eighteenth  century.' 

Time  has  dealt  gently  with  both  Johnson  and 
Boswell.  '  The  chief  glory  of  every  people,'  said  the 
former  in  the  preface  to  his  Dictionary  '  arises  from  its 
authors :  whether  I  shall  add  anything  to  the  reputa- 
tion of  English  literature  must  be  left  to  time.'  In 
the  constituency  of  the  present  no  dead  writer  addresses 
such  an  audience  as  Johnson  does.  Of  Johnson  Boswell 
might  have  said,  as  Cervantes  did  of  his  great  creation 
Don  Quixote,  he  and  his  subject  were  born  for  each 


1 6o  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

other.  There  is  no  greater  figure,  no  more  familiar 
face  in  our  literature  than  '  the  old  man  eloquent ' ; 
and  as  the  inseparable  companion  'held  in  my  heart 
of  hearts,  whose  fidelity  and  tenderness  I  consider  as 
a  great  part  of  the  comforts  which  are  yet  left  to  me/ 
rises  the  figure  of  his  biographer,  the  'Bozzy  no  more 
of  countless  follies  and  fatuities,  but  Boswell,  the  prince 
of  biographers,  the  inheritor  of  unfulfilled  renown,  now 
become,  like  his  hero  himself,  an  ancient.  And  they 
are  still  in  the  heyday  of  their  great  fame.  Along  the 
stream  of  time  the  little  bark,  as  he  hoped,  sails 
attendant,  pursues  the  triumph  and  partakes  the  gale. 
With  James  Boswell  it  has  happened,  as  Mark 
Pattison  says  of  Milton,  to  have  passed  beyond  the 
critics  into  a  region  of  his  own.  That  'mighty  civil 
gentlewoman,'  the  mistress  of  the  Green  Man  at  Ash- 
bourne,  M.  Killingley,  who  waited  on  him  with  the 
note  of  introduction  to  his  extensive  acquaintance — 
4  a  singular  favour  conferred  on  one  who  has  it  not  in 
her  power  to  make  any  other  return  but  her  most 
grateful  thanks,  &c./ — is  but  a  symbol  of  the  feelings 
of  the  readers  who  ever  wish  well  to  the  name  and  the 
fame  of  James  Boswell. 


THE  END. 


THIS  BOOK  is  DUE  ON 
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AUG291932       MAR  1 5 1962 

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MAR    80  194C 


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